They checked the rooms one by one, moving down the hallway slowly and poking their heads around each doorway, only to find that they were all empty. Beneath their shoes crunched the shattered cores of the lightning elementals and scattered bits of dust and rock that were struck by the walls from the veritable lightning storm that they had created. Before they reached the end of the hallway, Jeremy put up a hand and called for them to pause.
“How are you both doing with mana?” He asked.
Caleb, who had a clearer metric to go by – the number of spells he had cast, shrugged and said, “I could probably do another round like that before needing a break.”
But Zanie, who had been pouring mana into her barrier at a proportional rate to how much it was being attacked, looked apologetic and said, “I’m not dizzy or anything yet, but I think a rest is a good idea.”
“That’s fine,” Jeremy said. He looked toward the chamber at the end of the hallway, most of which he could see from where he stood, except for the sides that were cut off by the doorway. From what he could see, there were at least two other hallways extending from it, but the chamber itself did not appear occupied. Still, Jeremy did not want to risk triggering anything by stepping into a new place.
“Caleb, turn around and let me see the backpack,” he said. When Caleb did so, Jeremy unzipped the middle pocket of the bag and shifted the first aid kit to the side so he could dig through the snacks they brought and find one of the granola bars with lots of chocolate in it that Zanie liked. He handed it to her. “Let’s all sit down.”
Zanie plopped on the ground and tore open the granola bar. “Are you still freaked out about being in the dungeon?” She asked Caleb.
“A little, but I’m trying not to think about it.”
Jeremy leaned against the wall and closed his eyes so he could rub them with the tips of his fingers until he saw stars on his eyelids. He was just glad that the plan had worked, for now at least.
“You okay?” Zanie asked him.
“Fine, I just realized that I can actually see mana now,” he told her. “It’s going to take a little bit of getting used to.”
“That’s pretty neat.” She took a bite out of her granola bar and hummed thoughtfully as she chewed. “What does it look like?”
Jeremy dropped his hands to move them through the air like flowing water or silks. “I dunno. Like an acid trip.”
“That sounds a bit rough,” Caleb said sympathetically. “I was having trouble looking at everything back there just because of all the light. I can’t imagine it all turning into an acid trip.”
Jeremy shrugged. It would just take some getting used to. He looked at their overlays now that his neurons weren’t crackling and popping trying to keep up with what his eyeballs were sending them. They each had shifted in color about the same amount, given that they were standing directly next to each other, from dark red to scarlet.
“I’m assuming that it is a result of getting the first ring,” he said. “Have either of you noticed anything different?”
Neither of them had. They rested there for another twenty minutes or so, chatting about whether Zanie would eventually build up enough resistance to electricity that she could just take direct hits herself the way the lightning elementals did. But Jeremy started to get antsy and decided it was time to move further into the dungeon. They did not actually know how quickly the elementals might regenerate, after all.
They huddled at the end of the hallway and peered into the chamber. It looked much the same as the one with the entrance. There was a hard-packed dirt floor, mossy, gritty rock walls, and a low ceiling cast in the ambient glow of crystal clusters protruding from the mortar and dirt. Only two other hallways led out of the chamber, each with what appeared to be about the same number of rooms that they had just cleared before opening into yet another softly glowing chamber.
“Okay,” Jeremy said, “we’ll take the hallways one by one. I’m hoping that triggering one hallway doesn’t bring out the elementals from the other one because then we’ll have them at our back if we are in the first hallway fighting. So…”
He pressed his lips together and paused to think. “As soon as we trigger the lightning elementals to start gathering in the first hallway, we’ll come back out into the chamber. Zanie, you put the barrier across the doorway to the hallway. That way, we can keep an eye on the other hallway to make sure nothing is coming out of it and cutting us off from the back.”
They both nodded. Jeremy threaded his fingers together and flexed them in front of his chest with a sigh. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them wide. By the end of this dungeon, he was going to have a headache; he just knew it.
“Let’s go then.”
Caleb was the one to peer into the first room this time. They chose the hallway on the left first, Jeremy and Zanie both hanging back by the entrance while he cast the spell to kill the first lightning elemental. He had his hands behind his back this time, clasped over where the M4 hung from the strap across his shoulder. As soon as there was a flash of light as the elemental died, he ran back to the chamber to join them.
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The fight went pretty much the same as the first one had. Zanie threw up the lightning barrier and fed mana to it constantly so that it remained in place despite the arcs of electricity striking it and making it sizzle and flash. Caleb cast his spell in as rapid succession as he was able to aim at the creatures' cores, taking them down one by one. And Jeremy squinted into the swirling, flashing mess in front of them and dropped mana on the elementals to slow their attacks.
When the final lightning elemental cracked, flashed, and shattered to the ground, Zanie let the barrier fall with a sigh of relief. “Looks like each hallway is its own separate thing.”
“Thank god,” Caleb said.
Jeremy glanced at the third hallway, which had remained silent throughout the fight.
“We need to check this hallway,” he said before starting down the one they had just cleared.
It was truly cleared. He stuck his head into each room to confirm that they were all empty as they made their way to the chamber on the other end. Once again, it looked just like the others – cramped, mossy, and damp. Unlike the other level one dungeon, which appeared to be still constructing itself at the end of each corridor, this one was a dead end. The walls were made entirely of stacked stone, with no doorways leading out into nothingness.
“Weird that it’s just completely empty,” Caleb observed. Jeremy thought it was probably best that there were no empty doorways to remind him that they were hanging suspended in some unknown nothingness, only anchored to their usual plane of existence by the dungeon entrance.
“We should take another break, yeah?” Zanie asked. “How are you guys feeling?”
“Another break is fine,” Jeremy turned to walk back down the hallway. “We should sit in the same spot so that the exit is at our back.”
They made their way to the entrance to the first hallway that they came out of and sat in a semi-circle beyond where the shards of the lightning elemental cores littered the ground. Jeremy rifled through Caleb’s backpack again and pulled out granola bars for all three of them. They had been in the dungeon for close to forty minutes or so by his estimation, so he was hopeful that they might be able to clear it in just over an hour. Not that the time really mattered unless the creatures regenerated quickly, which they did not appear to do.
“So, is this like the other dungeon at all?” Caleb asked as they munched. “I mean, I know it looks different and has different monsters, but…?”
Jeremy pursed his lips and looked around. “It’s more compact. Not just because of the low cellar environment instead of, like, vaulted gothic architecture, but it’s literally spaced closer together. There was probably an equal number of rooms with a few creatures in them in the other dungeon, but they were spaced so far apart that it took us forty minutes to clear a corridor. They also did not all come rushing at us at once, so it took a little longer.”
“Huh,” Caleb leaned back against the wall, then made a face and twisted to see that he had pushed against a patch of soft moss, which he must not have expected. Then he shrugged and leaned against it again. “It’s funny that the larger dungeon would have such little creatures in it.”
“Do you think the spacing between the rooms is why the imps did not all attack at once the way these elementals are?” Zanie wondered.
“Maybe,” Jeremy shrugged because he honestly had no idea.
“Or, maybe there is an actual difference between biological creatures and elementals.” Caleb posited. “Like maybe the lightning elementals are a hive mind of some kind – all a part of one storm.”
Jeremy scrunched up his face and shook his head. “I’m more inclined to agree with Zanie’s hypothesis on this one. Why wouldn’t all of the lightning elementals in the dungeon attack at once, then? Why hallway by hallway? I think that points more towards proximity being the important factor.”
So they spent their twenty-minute break bickering back and forth about possible explanations for why the two dungeons were different and what might have caused them to spawn the creatures that they did. Then Jeremy started to get antsy again because it had now been close to an hour since they killed the first elemental, and they still weren’t sure how long it would take for them to begin regenerating.
“We feeling all right?” He asked, gripping the rough stone wall to push himself to his feet.
“Just fine.” Zanie hopped up next to him. “We ready to clear this last hallway?”
Caleb clambered to his feet as well, but rather than excited, he looked resigned. “There will probably be a boss in this one since it’s level one, right?”
“I assume so,” Jeremy said, leading them across the chamber toward the third hallway. But we’ll just have to deal with it when it comes. If we have to retreat, we will.”
They took a moment to center themselves, and then Caleb snuck down the hallway and peeked into the first room. The fight followed the same as the other two had. There was a flash of light. Caleb hurried back toward them so that Zanie could put up the lightning barrier at his back. Then Caleb and Jeremy attacked the elementals beyond the barrier until all that remained of their brilliant buzzing electrical storm was the cracked bits of their cores littering the ground.
This time, however, before Jeremy had a chance to crunch his way down the hallway and check to make sure all of the rooms were truly cleared, he felt something cold drip onto his forehead. He touched the spot and looked at the pad of his finger to see that it was shiny and wet. Then he lifted his eyes and saw several drips of water clinging to the ceiling before growing heavy enough to fall, only to be replaced by another drop.
“Uh…” he said.
“The boss?” Caleb whispered, his face tilted up as well.
“What about that?” Zanie hissed, drawing both their attention with a finger pointed down the hallway to the chamber beyond, which glowed and flashed with a new lightning elemental. A bolt of electricity zigzagged down the hallway from it, smashing into the stone walls and burying itself in the ground just a couple feet from them. A twin bolt of electricity zapped out of the second hallway they had cleared. Jeremy spun around and saw with no small amount of relief that the original hallway remained quiet, absent of the hair-raising hum traveling down the other two.
“Water and electricity don’t mix,” Caleb said, eyes raised to the ceiling once again.
“We should retreat to the first hallway while we figure out what is going on,” Jeremy instructed.
He took a step in that direction, but then it was as if the ceiling had opened to let in a deluge of water. The little drips, like a leaky tap, suddenly became torrents of water that moved and swirled as if they had minds of their own while they fell to splash against the packed-earth floor. At the same time, bolts of electricity snaked out of the hallways to reach for them.