The swirl of mana coalesced into what was now becoming the familiar form of a dungeon entrance. The storm continued to whip violently around it, bending a small, ornamental sapling on one of the neighbor's yards and sending trash cans rolling down the street. One caught the wind at just the right angle to be lifted off the ground and sailed away until it slammed into the siding of a house. Bolts of electricity continued to zap out of the dungeon entrance, but after another minute or so, bolts of lightning zig-zagged from the clouds above, striking it and leaving jagged impressions on Jeremy’s retinas.
The first bolt of lightning to crash into the dungeon entrance sent a shower of sparks and smaller bolts of electricity skittering around the circle, accompanied by a clap of thunder that rattled the garage door. Everyone flinched back from the window but returned quickly to watch in amazement. Jeremy, in particular, kept his eyes glued to the swirl of blue energy because it had merged enough to form an overlay, which had been deep red for a moment before it was struck by lightning but had now transitioned to a more vibrant scarlet.
“What is that thing?” the guy with the shotgun asked. He was standing on the other side of the garage, peering through the dusty little windows in the garage door, shotgun hanging limply by his side.
“It’s a dungeon,” Jeremy told him. “Once it stabilizes, monsters will come out of it, and you can go inside and clear them out.”
“Right in my front yard?” The man shook his head.
The door from the garage into the house abruptly flew open, banging into the wall. A woman stomped down the little set of steps, hollering, “I got Felix settled in his crate. Henry, are you seeing this?” She stopped when she spotted Jeremy and Co., then stared at the man with the shotgun. “Who are they?”
“Some dumbasses who got caught out in the storm,” Henry told her. “And yeah, I’m seeing it. They say monsters are going to come out of that thing.”
The woman watched them out of the corner of her eye as she joined Henry in peering through the garage door windows. Another bolt of lightning struck the dungeon entrance, lighting up the entire garage blindingly white. When Jeremy opened his eyes again, he could see that the overlay still remained scarlet but was gradually brightening to an orange color. The shimmering kaleidoscope of mana still swirled around the more bodily blue energy that was visible to everyone. Watching it began to feel like staring at a computer screen for hours on end without blinking – a sharp ache in his eyeballs and a dull throb behind his forehead. He closed his eyes and took a step back, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“You okay?” Zanie asked.
“I can literally watch its overlay shifting up in color,” He groaned. “It’s absorbing mana really quickly. Looking at it gives me a headache.”
“Don’t look at it then,” Caleb told him.
“Yeah, but…” he peeked out the window to see that the overlay had shifted to orange. A piece of lawn furniture tumbled across the lawn, slamming into the side of one of the cars. The woman made an anguished sound.
“What the hell kind of storm is this, and why didn’t the weather people say anything about it?” she complained.
“It’s obviously got something to do with magic.” Henry gestured outside. “It’s some kind of magical storm.”
“Not surprising you kids got caught out in it.” She turned to them with a hand on her hip. “Goodness, it came on so fast.”
It had not really. The wind had been whipping for most of the morning, but Jeremy certainly had not expected a storm this violent. Maybe some high winds and rain like any other autumn thunderstorm, but this was more like a hurricane coming up the coast. Even if satellites were down, there should have been some kind of warning if a hurricane was about to make landfall. So maybe it had come out of nowhere.
The woman looked them up and down, critically eyeing their duffle bags and guns. “Are you some kind of vigilantes? My sister down in New Mexico said there’s a bunch of people getting together to go out and fight dust devils and whatever the hell else is popping out of the desert out there.”
“We’re just trying to get to his parent’s house.” Caleb nodded at Jeremy. “Although we have done a little monster killing along the way.”
She nodded, some of her thin blonde hair that was swept up into a rapidly loosening bun falling around her face. Like Henry, she wore practical, working-around-the-house clothes, the knees of her jeans faded white from use and stained with dirt. A pair of gardening gloves similarly caked with dirt, stuck out of her back pocket as if she had been out in the flower beds before the storm hit. It had come on fast, she had said.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
“There’s been this thing out there in the woods,” she pointed in the direction from which they had run to get here, “It doesn’t come around the houses, but we can hear it crashing around. Bigger than a squirrel, that’s for sure.”
Caleb nodded. “We ran into it, and it attacked. Some,” he held his hands out like he was hoping that waving them around would communicate his meaning, “weird…thing. It was tearing down trees. Attacked us, so we had to kill it.”
“Huh.”
Jeremy peeked out at the dungeon again. The overlay had shifted to a bright yellow already. Another bolt of lightning slammed into it, washing out all the colors of the lawns and the cars in a blinding flash. He winced and looked away again.
“Well, you said monsters are going to come out of that thing?” Henry asked. “Does that mean I’m going to have the military up in my front yard? They’ve been dealing with the gates and all by evacuating people away. They better not think I’m leaving my house. I’ll fight the monsters off.”
“The dungeons are a little different from the gates,” Jeremy assured him, although the guard might show up. “There isn’t as uniform of a response to them. We’ve run into one controlled by the guard and one in some lady’s house, and nobody knew about it, so…”
“You said people can go in and clear them out?” Henry remembered, “Can you go in and clear this one of the monsters once the storm ends?”
Jeremy glanced out the window to see that the overlay had already shifted into a bright blue, well on its way to receiving its first ring if the mana continued to pour in. “Maybe.”
“Well, my name is Julie, and this is Henry.” The woman said, “Let me get you some towels. Do you all want something to drink?”
She disappeared inside the house before they could say anything. By the time she returned, the dungeon’s overlay was nearly white, so bright that Jeremy could hardly look at it. He took a towel from Julie without looking, muttering a quick thanks, his eyes glued outside because he was certain he was about to witness a ring forming. And then it did.
The white of the overlay flashed brightly as if another bolt of lightning had struck it and then faded into a single, glowing ring around the swirling blue energy. The overlay had reset to the original deep red color, and mana continued to swirl around it in a multicolored storm. Jeremy toweled off the back of his neck and put a palm to his pounding forehead.
“It just got a ring.”
“Really?” Zanie and Caleb peered out the window, “Doesn’t look any different.”
“Well, it did.”
“Here’s some iced tea if anyone is thirsty,” Julie said, setting a bright orange plastic pitcher and a stack of paper cups on the workbench. Then she went and joined Jimmy to look out the windows again. Her work jeans had been swapped for a pair of more comfortable leggings, and she now wore slippers on her feet instead of sneakers. Caleb helped himself to a cup of tea.
Then, as suddenly as the rain had hit, it petered off. Jeremy had not even realized how deafening it had been against the garage roof until the barrage of water let up, leaving his ears practically ringing with quiet. It was still raining, but now it was just a patter on the roof, and there were fewer gale-force winds slamming the sheets of rain into the side of the house. The wind no longer bent the trees in the yards, but their twigs and leaves still listed to the side, blown that way for so long that they did not immediately bounce back into place. Branches and leaves littered the lawn and street, and in the center of the circle lay the dungeon entrance, a globe of blue energy suspended in mid-air with a single ring and an orange overlay.
It felt as though they had all been holding their breaths the entire time and could only now breathe easily. Jeremy rubbed his forehead and peered up at the clouds. They were just as dark and menacing, but now the flashes of lightning illuminated them a ways off, arcing down toward the horizon instead of directly in front of the house. The rain splashed more gently against the inch or so of water streaming down the road, no longer creating a violent jumping surface but more gentle ripples instead.
“Do you think that was it?” Zanie asked.
They all looked out the window silently since nobody had any idea.
The mana that Jeremy had been able to see collecting in the dungeon entrance no longer shimmered around it. Whatever crazy triangulation of mana the storm's energy had created over this particular spot had ended or moved on to create another dungeon somewhere else. He wondered if it would be like how tornados skipped sometimes, touching down to destroy houses, then leaving stretches of land untouched before touching down a little further away. Maybe this storm would leave a hopscotch of dungeons behind. He rubbed his forehead.
“Well, as long as it stabilizes like that,” he gestured toward the circle, “We could probably go in,” he glanced at Caleb, “all three of us, and be able to clear it out. Especially since it just sprung up. Maybe there won’t be as many monsters inside yet.”
Although he had a feeling that if the dungeon had rapidly leveled up to the creation of a ring, it probably already had a large amount of space and structure inside, which was likely already populated. But maybe not to the point that it would start getting overcrowded and send monsters out into the world. If they went in as soon as they were sure the storm had passed over, they might be able to clear it out more easily.
Caleb looked a little green around the gills, especially since he had witnessed the dungeon being formed out of literally nothing – well, mana, but he could not see that the way that Jeremy could. And it wasn’t as if mana was the most solid building material, although it seemed to be able to create solid things pretty well – from pebbles to gothic architecture. Jeremy wondered what the inside of this dungeon would look like. If the fact that the one in Mrs. Jenning’s basement had only been a field without any actual building was because it did not have a ring, or if all dungeons simply looked different depending on how they were created and what monsters they formed. Perhaps, since they also had overlays, they too had something similar to the unique personality traits that people did, which determined their structure and the types of monsters they created.
Even though his head hurt and he was soaked through, Jeremy grinned. “As soon as we are sure that the storm has actually passed, we’ll take a crack at it.”
Zanie patted Caleb on the shoulder sympathetically as he scratched the back of his neck and peered out the window at the dungeon.