It would seem that our journey was slowly coming to an end. A little over two weeks ago (or was it three weeks?) we received a message from the gods.

The Twins, as the sibling gods of the suns are often called, blessed our small group and gave us a mission. Well, an opportunity is a more fitting name for it.

A new dungeon. Just a few weeks travel off from our home town. And to top it all off, it was even located in an as of yet uninhabited region. The opportunity of a lifetime.

And now we were finally here. Well, almost.

Not too long ago, just yesterday in fact, we crossed into a desert like landscape. It was also at around that time that Jared, our member most in tune with the mystical, sensed the whirlpool of magic inherent to every dungeon.

But now I could feel it too. We all felt it. And quite frankly, it’s horrifying. Like the maw of a beast of unimaginable proportions sucking in the lifeblood of the world. We all stood there, frozen in awe and a not so small amount of terror.

If a wizard had that amount of power at their back and call, they could do things of immense proportion. Like, like, I don’t even know what! Maybe flatten a whole country. Or an entire continent! I don’t even want to imagine what a proper mage could do with it.

But all of that was a moot point, because the recipient was none of those. It was a dungeon. The gods’ gift onto mortals.

We spent the rest of the day in contemplative silence. None of us wanted to interrupt it. After all, this is the first time any one of us had seen a dungeon or its power. Such a shock needed time to be processed.

Maybe little Timmy had an easier time of it. Untouched by the gods as he is, he won’t be able to see much. Maybe at most get a vague feeling of something supernatural being close by, but even that’s doubtful.

But we still needed someone to carry our things through the dungeon, where we would be busy fighting to carry it ourselves, so off he went with us anyway. Besides, we paid him good money to be here.

And then we reached the dungeon proper. It was… a bit underwhelming, but that a new dungeon for you. We really shouldn’t have expected that much from it. Most definitely not the fabled gates of the famous Ighrad dungeon.

Anyway, we set up a sentry schedule and went to sleep. It’s best if we tackle this full of energy tomorrow.

The next morning, we all woke up full of trepidation. Our first dungeon delve was upon us.

We all prayed to our chosen god with a small hope of a last-minute appointment as a chosen, but no such luck for any of us. No matter, we had a dungeon to conquer.

We stepped in, our formation a rather simple one.

Me and Hilda in the front, guarding against any and all attack to come. Behind us were Jared and Matt and behind them Janice, though Matt and Janice tended to switch positions sometimes. I never really understood that part. Why would it matter whether the rogue or the ranger were behind? Either way, right now the rogue, Janice, trailed behind our group.

The insides of the cave were dark and cramped. The walls made of some kind of greyish stone were dry, though I guess that makes sense in a desert.

Jared made a light for us. After all, he did have the most power to spare fort that. The spellcaster had real chances of becoming a wizard someday.

Oh, yeah. Little Timmy was also in our formation, trailing behind us along with Janice.

The cave, which turned out to be more of a tunnel was littered with stalagmites and stalactites obstructing the way. We weaved through them where we could, though wasn’t always an option. When the path got too narrow for us to pass while still in formation, me and Hilda smashed a couple of the pillars to bit, freeing our way.

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Sure, there was a small chance of alerting whatever guardians the dungeon summoned forth, but we were confident in our group. No weak critters from a newly spawned dungeon could make us flinch.

After a little while, we spotted our first enemy. A… frog?

Sure, it was giant, almost a metre high, and had almost no resemblance to the limber creatures that live in the nearby lakes, but it was still a frog.

And perhaps it even had the mental faculties of one. Because, it just, shot its tongue, at us. Yeah, I’m not exactly sure what that was supposed to accomplish.

Hilda just batted it aside with her shield and the cut it off. Not even a second later, Matt shot and arrow right into its head and it dropped dead.

We stared at each other nervously. The same thing probably ran through all of our minds at that point. That couldn’t have been all, could it?

It was just that weak.

Our two more nimble members quickly got to dismembering it. Even if this first fight was easy, the next one didn’t have to be, so it was good to learn what we could from this corpse. And then there was also the other motivator. The bigger motivator. The potential of at least part of the body being valuable.

“It’s poisonous,” Janice called out.

“Sure, but it’s secreted through the skin. Makes it tough to extract. We’ll be lucky if it’s even sellable,” replied the ever-dour ranger, Matt.

“Do we at least know what kind of poison it is?” I asked in return. That would be the real deciding factor. If it’s something valuable, it doesn’t matter how difficult it is to extract a poison. If, on the other hand, it’s useless, we wouldn’t be able to sell it at all.

“Dunno,” replied Janice. “Anybody care to try it out?”

With a heavy sigh, Hilda volunteers. “That’s what I get for wanting to be the tank,” she mutters as she approaches the duo crouching over the corpse.

Jared also approaches with a similar sigh. He already knows it will be his job to heal if anything goes wrong.

Thankfully, it doesn’t. With the smaller doses Hilda applies to her skin, the biggest symptom she feels are some phantom sensations of pain and maybe a twitch of a muscle here and there.

But that’s not the problem. It’s doubtful whether one of these monsters can manage to touch us for long enough to give us a larger dose than that, and all of us can deal with problems like that.

No, the problem are the phantom sensations. We all know what that means and we look at each other knowingly. It is inevitable that once these things reach the open market, a new drug would be invented.

But that’s for the future. We were still in a dungeon.

We progressed further and further in. The frogs became more and more frequent until we eventually faced off against two and then three or even four at once.

Still, it wasn’t a tough fight even against the occasional group of four. We just had to actually employ our training for once.

A hack here, a slash there. A redirection off of a shield and a well-aimed arrow. And repeat.

Arrow, shield, magic, dagger, sword, Timmy’s distracting cough, getting knocked over by one of the shooting tongues, falling to the ground.

Wait, what?

By the time I realized what was happening, the fight was already over. Nonetheless, the fact that I let myself get distracted like that wasn’t a good feeling at all. What if the monsters were actually competent here?

“Can you not shut up for one moment! I don’t know if you haven’t noticed, but we’re in a dungeon! That could have cost us much more than just Alex falling to the ground,” Matt yelled at Timmy.

Which was… harsh. But, to be fair, the kid had been an almost constant source of coughs since we entered. Even now he was panting like a dog. Seriously, I though we hired him because he was quite fit for one untouched by gods.

“So- Sorry,” he began, but had to take another huge breath of air, which just caused him to cough more.

“Ah, forget about it. At least try to be quiet. We don’t pay you to act like a common street dog.

We pressed on deeper down the tunnel. Except that Timmy did not quiet down at all. If anything, he appeared to be becoming louder.

Eventually, Jared couldn’t take it anymore and approached him. He cast some kind of spell. Based on the fact that Timmy’s breathing eased a bit, a healing spell of some kind.

“Hmm, guys, perhaps this should be it for today.”

“What do you mean, Jared? It’s barely been two hours and also haven’t even reached the end yet,” Janet was quick to point out.

“Be that as it may, I think we have a more pressing issue at hand. Whatever is causing Timmy to cough and wheeze is not natural. He has something in his lungs and judging by the time this began, we may all be in danger.”

That made us all freeze. Environmental effects like that weren’t common in dungeons. In fact, there were only two real scenarios in which you heard about it. Both of them bad for us.

Either the dungeon was old and powerful, thus capable of engineering these kinds of effects, whether by nature or magic. Or, and this was the worse of the options, even if mote likely, the dungeon was cursed. Corrupted. Blighted. Whatever you wanted to call it, they basically always got destroyed.

Which would normally be a motivator to delve it as much as possible beforehand. But not if this is the cause, or symptom, of its corruption. We had to get out of here, and fast.