The next series of events happened in quick succession. They knew they were short on time, but they couldn’t afford to simply rush in the dungeon. Even besides the fact that the doors were still closed, the ‘beacon’ of light diminished their hopes of getting through this stealthily. Their fight with the spectral knight also put them on the back foot.

“Can we still do this? Without the Baron’s men catching us in the act?” Jack asked.

Brom nodded.

“There is still a chance. Their capital is more two days of travel away. There might still be patrols closer to us than that, but there is no certainty that they would approach such a display of magic without taking precautions.”

“Brom’s saying we should risk it.” Ava translated, already patched up by Moran.

The dwarf frowned, but didn’t correct her.

“Right. Then we should wake Aure up. His offer of guarding our horses can’t be on the table anymore. It places him at too high a risk.” Jack said.

That troubled them somewhat, since their carriage was their ticket out of this mess, but nobody gainsaid him.

Moran went to wake up the healer. They didn’t have any Mana Potions, but a few sips from a Stamina Potion did the work. The rest of them shared what remained of that potion. It wasn’t a perfect start, but their fight had been rough, even if most of them walked away without damage. As the mage himself attested.

“That was a spectral construct.” Aure said, after getting his bearings. “I might be in the wrong, but I believe it was. The fact that it came into being after I tested the door must mean that it was placed there as a guard. To stop all easy assailants.”

“Mrk not think we went easy. All us fight. Difficult enemy.”

“I do not disagree. Still, that construct had who knows how much time to gather its magic. I do not believe it would have normally been this strong, if you would have fought it when it was first created.”

“And that light?” Moran asked. “I thought we were goners, but it didn’t do anything.”

“I do not believe that light’s purpose was to hurt intruders. That was what the ‘knight’ was for. The light itself was simply a beacon. Should those who fought the knight prevail, the leftover magic would form a signal, to those who would have come in the aid of this place, in times long past. The magic remained, the would-be defenders not.”

“I don’t know about that.” Jack said. “Maybe the light didn’t reach its former defenders, but it sure made a splash.”

“Jack is right.” Brom agreed. “Whoever saw it must be wondering what it was. And tentatively making their way here.”

They shared a heavy look, but it was Ava who broke the silence.

“Ah well, it’s not like we weren’t going in anyway. Besides, time pressure is the spice of life.”

Politely ignoring the grinning Satyr, Aure went on.

“I’m afraid I must take your offer, young Jack. To remain would be too much of a risk for me. Yet, I have one parting advice that may prove to be of benefit. I cannot be perfectly sure, but I sensed no other trap or ward in that door. Only the magic which coalesced into that construct. With that beacon depleting what was left of it, I believe the doors to the dungeon can now be open by… well, brute force alone.”

“That’s… oddly fortunate for us.” Jack said.

“Not necessarily. The role of that knight was to serve as a preliminary defense. If an assailant could defeat it, the logical next step would be to call for aid, which the beacon did.” Brom said. “Further power or magic poured into the first layer of defense would have been futile.”

“Since we already proved we could beat what they threw at us. Right, got it. Well, no time like the present.” Jack said, getting up.

They said their goodbyes to Aure, who left their group on foot, heading for the nearest village. He was kind enough to cast a camouflage spell on their carriage, but warned them it wouldn’t last more than a few days and not under scrutiny. He didn’t have enough left to do the same for the horses. He did, however, promise to send a message to Elia, at the first chance he gets.

With the mage gone, the first neared the double doors and thought about a plan of action. They were geared up and ready as they ever would be, but they weren’t sure if brute force really was the way to go.

Still, only one way to find out.

“Hey Brom, does your shield have any energy left?” Jack asked.

The dwarf nodded. He had told them he felt his artifacts like a pressure in his mind. He knew them intimately by now. And he had been pummeled by that construct for quite a bit.

So, he stepped forward and bashed his shield into the doors, releasing the gathered momentum.

The massive, tall, reinforced stone doors… flew open. They caused quite a bang, enough that most of them flinched, but no crack appeared in them and no further effect was triggered.

“Good.” Brom nodded. “Mrk, take point. The rest will follow in the formation we discussed.”

Mrk scurried forward and in they went.

Nobody said a word for quite a while. Jack was worried about Mrk falling to a trap, but he was in too much awe to chatter aimlessly. Their torches gave off enough light, but suddenly he wished for more. True, he had never seen a dungeon before, never even heard much about one, so what he saw could be paltry in compared to a grander one. But it still took away his words.

They were walking though a massive tunnel, easily more than twice in height than Jack was tall. Broad too. They could have all walked in a line and not touched the side walls. The architecture was strange, but grand. The tunnel and side rooms they saw weren’t built, so much as carved from the rock itself. And everything they saw was perfectly polished, not a crack or even a hairline fracture in sight. His Skills told him that what they searched for was deeper below, but there was something fuzzier about the way his Skill was working. More so than ever. It was as if sometimes his Skill just stopped working. Other times, it showed contradicting results. And that wasn’t the only thing that troubled Jack.

“Hey, guys. Right now, we’re walking through a tunnel. We’ve been doing it for a few minutes now. But those doors were set in a cliff and that cliff was nowhere near this long. Shouldn’t we be going down?”

They all stopped at once, realizing something was indeed off. Mrk returned as well.

“I too have expected stairs.” Brom said. “What do your Skills tell you?”

“|Sense Destination| isn’t working properly, thought it mostly points down. |Past Trails| is working as always.” He said, looking back. “It just shows a line though.”

“And your latest one?”

Jack mentally grimaced. He had forgotten to use his most recent Skill. When he did, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. At first. But when the turned his head to tell Brom all was good, North and South suddenly switched places. He moves again and felt the same thing. In this place, the cardinal points kept jumping around.

“Something wrong. My Skills aren’t working properly. |Mental Compass| keeps giving me weird results. I think we’re being affected, somehow.”

Brom breathed out and nodded.

“Spatial Skills. The oldest and most high-levelled |Architects| in my dwarfhome have them. Good find Jack. We could have been walking like this for hours.”

“Wait, Ava said. So this corridor leads… nowhere?”

“It is more correct to say that we are not in a corridor. We are in an antechamber. It simply seems to stretch out forever. More likely, we are simply walking in place.”

“How to we get out?” Moran asked.

“Jack, what does the map say?”

He looked at it and saw that the map didn’t really reveal anything about this forever corridor. It just showed a room and a room directly bellow it. No stairs, though the first time he gazed at it he simply imagined the mapmaker didn’t include them. Now, though…

“There’s a room just under this one. I think that’s we’re the real dungeon starts. No idea how to go there, though.”

“How past people go there?” Mrk asked.

“That which affects us most likely didn’t affect them. Or perhaps they had a key we do not possess.”

“Alright. So… do we break the floor now or later?” Ava asked.

No one wanted to give the Satyr the satisfaction of being right, since that would just spur on more jokes, but in this case she was. They didn’t have the key. They didn’t know how to get below any other way. So breaking the floor it was.

They didn’t want to use any scrolls, so they just went ahead using Skills, those of them which actually had attack Skill. Which meant only Brom and Ava. Though Ava did promise not to set the floor on fire. They aimed and went for it.

“|Piercing Shot|!”

“|Quick Swing|”

Brom had enlarged his axe before swinging, so the chop left quite a dent in the unmagical stone. However, it was Ava’s arrow which passed through the entire thickness of the stone floor and emerged from the other side. Light could be seen shining from the small hole.

That was the nice thing which resulted from the attack. The bad thing was that the roof above their heads started to slowly descent. Oh, and they were now closed off by walls on all four sides.

“Trap!” Mrk warned.

You don’t say.

“Brom, could fire melt this stone?”

“Not the kind in those scrolls.”

“The potion of Strength? Can you use that and smash through?”

The dwarf thought for a quick second before replying.

“No. Maybe with my Skill, but it needs time to recharge.”

Damn it!

“Alright then. Everybody, get your weapons out and start hacking away at the floor. Brom, Ava, when your Skills recharge, yell for us to back away and use them. Go!”

They started slashing, cutting and aiming at the floor. Brom’s axe was doing the most damage, until its magic faded and the head shrunk back to its normal size. The least amount of damage was made by Jack and Moran’s axe and sword. Even Mrk’s enchanted long-knives were chipping away, albeit slowly.

However, Jack didn’t have time to even think about complaining, because as he looked up to see how much the ceiling had closed in, he saw the second part of the trap. An array of spikes, set perhaps two feet apart had grown from the ceiling and was dangerously approaching them.

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“We’ve got spikes.” He shouted. “Hurry it up!”

They glanced up and went back at it with fervor. And still it wouldn’t be enough. Maybe with another Skill used and luck, it would grow big enough for Mrk to slip through. No way the rest of them made it. Jack thought hurriedly. What did they have? Their artifacts wouldn’t work. The Scrolls… Fire Shield might be of use, then again maybe not. Potion of IronSkin… would only help one. Jack didn’t know if that could be split. Even so, skin like iron didn’t really matter when you were squished to death. No potions, no scrolls… damn the lord and his pyromaniac interest. Fire was useless against stone.

But… acid isn’t.

He drew the wand they had take off the bandits and use it.

“Everyone, get back! |Acid Spray|” he shouted.

A burst of acid shot out and hit the floor. It started to eat into it in seconds. Emboldened, use used it again, two more times until the magic in it ran out. It would have to be enough. His |Eye for Flaw| Skill told him that the structure of the floor wasn’t as sound as it was before.

“Brom, is your Skill recharged?”

“Almost. But I can force it.”

“Me too.” Said Ava.

“Good. The acid is almost gone. Use them.”

Once again, they stroked. Brom’s axe hadn’t recovered enough to enlarge itself for more than one fit, but it was enough. They shouted their Skills and once the chunks of stone flew, Jack looked at he whole.

Yes!

It was large enough for all of them. Him and Brom would scrape themselves, but that was not even a worry compared to the spikes coming after them.

But as luck would have it, the designers of this dungeon were better at their jobs than Jack gave them credit for. As soon as the first among them, Moran, slipped through the whole to land in the room bellow them, the spikes started descending faster. They were almost on top of them anyhow. The increase in speed only served to assure Jack that they would be skewered if he didn’t do anything.

He raised his hand instinctively, not sure of what he was going to do, but knowing that he had to do something.

It was Brom who managed to actually do something productive. He dragged Jack towards him and with both his hands raised his shield above his head, shouting his Skill.

“|Shield Block|!”

For one second… two… tree, his shield actually managed to stop the descent of the floor, the others crouched up bellow his protection. But his Skill wasn’t meant for sustained assault. It faded and Jack saw his knees begin to shake.

“Jack!” Ava called. “Come on!”

He turned and noticed that in those few seconds Ava had already gotten more than halfway through whole and Moran was crouched next to it. He could make it. He knew that. Brom couldn’t last forever, but he would last enough. But that would mean leaving his friend to die.

Quickly, he stood up and added his force to Brom’s, pushing up the shield. Even with two of them the ceiling was still pushing them down, but at least now it was lowering slower.

“Jack!” Brom grunted. “Go! I’ll hold it.”

“I’m not leaving you here.” He responded, while Moran started to slip through the whole.

“I’ll be right after you. Go!”

“We both know that’s not true!”

“Damn it, Jack! I’ve made an oath!” the dwarf swore. “Don’t make me fail this one too.”

The intensity and hurt in his eyes almost made Jack leave. But he couldn’t. Brom might have made an oath to protect him, but Jack felt the same way about him too.

“I am not leaving you to die. You want to fulfill your oath. Stay alive so you can protect me in the future.” Jack grunted from the weight pressing down on him.

Moran had made it all the way through the whole and they were all three shouting and them to come down.

Think Jack, think!

“There is no one left to hold this, Jack. I’m sorry.” He said.

And headbutted Jack in the face. It didn’t hurt all that much, but the sheer shock of it made it easier for Brom to kick Jack away. He stumbled, one foot going through the whole. He would have gotten back up, but he felt somebody grab him, dragging him down.

“Let me go!” he shouted, as he was pulled more than half way through. “He’s going to die!”

“You’re both going to die! Let go!” Ava shouted back.

Meanwhile, the stress of it made Brom fall to his knees, now supporting his shield with both arms and back. It was a wonder the artifact hadn’t cracked yet.

Jak couldn’t believe it. He was going to watch his friend die. He watched, as the dwarf tried to use the axe as a cane, trying to stand up again.

The axe.

“Brom!” Jack shouted desperately, while Ava was dangling on his legs. “Use the axe! Prop the shield up!”

Truthfully, it wasn’t a thought that would have occurred to most. The races of this world have been though to treat magic with respect. To use a magic weapon as a… prop? Not many would have thought of this, not in the heat of the moment. This was a thought for those who learned to abandon prior learnings. An idea for seasoned adventurers, battle-hardened soldiers… and a desperate Jack.

Brom gave his axe a long look, but he was desperate too. He propped one part of his shield with an axe and thought it shacked, it held. There were perhaps two feet between the spikes and the floor now, so Brom had to crawl towards Jack. Slowly, but surely, he made his way to Jack. It was only when Brom grasped his hand, that he finally let go of the floor and allowed Ava to drag them both bellow.

He fell, holding Brom’s hand tight in his own, but a sudden lurch forced him to let go. He landed in a heap, all over Ava and noticed something was wrong. He was there. Ava was there, trying to stand up. Mrk and Moran where there too. Yet, why was Brom not there with them?

Fearfully, he looked up and saw his friend, one arm and head already passed through the opening, but no longer advancing. He was struggling though, grunting and Jack saw why in a second, as blood starting dripping from above.

The axe had supported the shield, but it was a hastily built contraption. I couldn’t stand for long, so… it didn’t. With nothing else holding it back, the floor dropped down, spikes with it. And impaled Brom.

He was wheezing. Trying to gulp air.

“Brom!” Jack shouted, shooting to his feet. “Ava, lift me!”

She did, eyes wide with shock. Jack leapt on her back, trying to rise, trying to drag his friend down. He grasped his hand, but when he pulled, Brom gave out a scream of pain.

“Don’t!” Moran screamed. “The spike’s still in him.”

He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t just leave him there. He was going to bleed to death.

“Jack…” he quietly said.

“Moran, give me a Healing Potion!” Jack shouted at him.

“You can’t heal him now! The spike’s still there. It’ll kill him.” He argued.

“…Jack…”

“It’s already killing him! Give it to me!” he roared.

“Jack!” Brom’s voice could be heard, straining.

They looked up and saw the dwarf struggling to speak.

“Spikes… stopped… wait.”

He didn’t know what that meant, but as he calmed down, he did notice that the grind of stone on stone made by the descending ceiling had stopped. Suddenly, it started up again. Brom gave out another gasp, but to their surprise, part of the floor-now-ceiling descended, forming a set up steps.

Perhaps it was a trap, but they didn’t care. They ran up the steps, to find the ceiling slowly retreating. They took Brom back out of the whole and laid him on his back.

“He’s in bad condition.” Moran spoke quickly. “Lung’s pierced. Hold him up!”

While Jack and Mrk complied, Moran gave Brom a few sips of Healing Potion to drink, before splashing a more sizable quantity on his chest and back. Only when the dwarf started breathing normally again, did he give him more Healing Potion to drink, along with a gulp or two of Stamin Potion for good measure.

They helped him back down the stair, warry of the previous room. By the time they descended, Brom was looking as healthy as before. Albeit with two new holes in his armor. At least his axe and shield were in one piece.

“Sorry, Jack.” Ava spoke first, uncharacteristically somber. “I thought you were both going to die. I… just wanted to save one of you.”

“No… no, you were right.” He said, breathing hard. “I just couldn’t… you know.”

“I know.” Brom said. “Thank you, Jack. Thank you all.”

“Mrk never more scared. Thought Brom die.” He said, shaking slightly.

“Yeah, me too.” Jack said. “I think we all did. I guess that trap wasn’t designed to go down all the way.”

“No. I don’t think so.” Brom seriously said, looking around. “I heard a voice when the spike pierced my body.”

“You got a new Level?” Moran asked.

“No. Not that voice. I believe… it was the voice of the one who created that trap. Or perhaps this dungeon. It spoke in the old tongue of the dwarves. It said ‘Welcome, blood of the mountain.’”

“Uh… am I not the only one getting it?” Jack asked around.

Blank faces met his question.

“It is an old expression, not perfectly translatable.” Brom continued. “But it is a name for my people. One we used among ourselves.”

“Oh. So this is like… a dwarf dungeon?”

“Not exactly. Look around you Jack. See the markings in the walls? What do they remind you off?”

For the first time, Jack really took in the room he was standing in. He could be excused from not doing that before given the… situation he has been in. But now that he, as well as the others, truly looked at it, he noticed that the room was quite different from the ‘corridor’ they had been in. Oh, it still looked sculpted out from the rock itself and the stone was still immaculate, with no sign of imperfections. But that was where the similarities ended.

This room was lighted, something like stone torches protruding from the corners, only with glowing gems instead of flames. And the walls did have markings. They were angular, resembling ropes, if ropes were braided at straight angles. Truthfully, there were few curves at all in those markings. And true to what Brom had said, Jack did feel that he had seen their kind before. Or at least something similar.

It took him a moment to place it, but he finally remembered. He looked down at his axe and saw that the branding on it was strikingly similar in design. Only it wasn’t his axe originally. It was Brom’s.

“I see that you understand.” The dwarf said. “The way the chambers appear to be made out of rock. The markings. The quality of the stonework and the voice I have heard. We are standing, I believe, in one of the lost cities of the dwarves.”

“Wait.” Ava said. “Your people built this? I mean… it kind of makes sense. Dwarfs love to build underground, no offence. But how did it end up a dungeon?”

“I do not know. And that worries me. But there is something that worries me more. If there was any notion of a forgotten dwarf city in my dwarfhome, I would have known of it. Such information is not to be kept in the minds of the few. Especially one so close to my home. Yet no dwarf I know has any knowledge of this place. There is no dwarfhome known to exist in this area, current or forgotten.”

“Alright. I mean, I get that it’s shocking, but why is it ‘worrying’, exactly?” Jack asked.

“Because.” Brom breathed out. “Much of my people’s art has been forgotten over time. If this… dungeon is as ancient as it seems to be, then we face a harder time ahead than I originally thought.”

***

They talked it over, whether they should go on ahead or go back out. Brom was of the impression that the risk of their endeavor has risen quite high. But he thought that they could still give it a go. They just had to be careful. So, they talked it over and decided to go in. Perhaps they would retreat if they faced with too much danger, but they still had to try.

Jack thought that one possible motivation was the voice he heard and that he was pretty sure the others heard as well. It offered him the |Dungeon Diver| Class, but he refused it. Sadly. Still, he was pretty sure at least a few of his friend has leveled, though he understood why this might not be the best time to share it. They’d brag about it once they resurfaced though, of that he was sure of.

They went down a spiral staircase, in the same formation as before. They withheld from talking at first, fearful of hidden enemies, but Ava starting to loot the glowing gems returned to them a sense of normality. Enough to have them talk, though still in low voices.

They reached the conclusion that Brom’s blood was what had stopped the spiked from further descent. It had only been a theory at first, but they saw no better way for the trap recognizing it was hurting a dwarf, since it didn’t stop descending when Brom had simply stood in the room.

They theory stopped being one when they started to encounter other traps laid out for would be robbers. Walls that suddenly started to close in. Spiked shooting up from floors. Ceilings which collapsed, letting loose scores of boulders. Huge axes swiping down from walls. Arrows shooting at them from slits. The list went on.

Mrk saw and warned the group about most of the traps. They weren’t that concealed. But he did miss a few of them. They didn’t suffer much damage, not something that couldn’t be healed with a sip of Healing Potion or even the ointments from back home. But the floor retreating from under you was very much a stress factor.

Which was when Ava had her bright idea. Each time they came to a new turn in the corridor, a new set of steps or entered a new room, the Satyr would prick Brom with one of her arrows and let it loose at the nearest surface. Sometimes the trap half-activated, but retreated quickly. Sometimes the trap didn’t activate at all. They couldn’t always know when a trap was defeated, since it didn’t always show, but Ava still had great fun.

Especially since it continually annoyed Brom.

So they went, bypassing one trap after another. It took them the better part of the day and they had gone down quite a few levels. Five, if Jack’s count was correct. And it all lasted until they encountered their first real set of enemies.

Turning a corner, they spotted the entrance to another room. Sanding sentry it front of it were what Jack describe as golems, though they were the first he had ever seen. Almost as tall as the ‘knight’ had been, the constructs looked to have been made out of earth, packed into a vague humanoid shape. Round rocks peppered their ‘skin’ like scales. Only a couple of glowing gemstones could be seen on each golem, positioned roughly where the eyes should have been.

They weren’t carrying much in what amounted as weapons, as they only held wooden clubs. Still, Jack supposed the clubs were massive enough to break a few bones, if one was unlucky or slow enough to get hit by them.

All in all, a low to medium opponent.

“Oh, yes.” Ava said. “The terrible dwarven creations. My fur’s starting to fall off.”

Brom frowned, but said nothing.

“Think we can get around them?” Jack asked.

“Perhaps.” Brom grunted, probably still annoyed that he was being used as a skeleton key by Ava.

“I’ve already made a couple of Brom-flavored arrows. Should I shoot them, oh glorious leader?”

“That would be Brom, in this case.” Jack responded.

“Shoot.” Brom said.

Ava took aim and loosed her two arrows, one after the other, straight at the golem’s chests. The arrows stuck, imbedding themselves, but almost nothing happened. The two constructs straightened lifted their heads, as if to peer at their group, but they didn’t move.

“This means we go?” Mrk asked.

“I’m not sure.” Brom answered. “Let’s go forward. But slowly.”

They advanced as a group and made it until maybe fifteen feet away from the mud sentries, before they reacted. As one, they lifted the massive clubs they carried and grasped them with both hands.

Great. I was really getting used to this.

“I am Brom O-“ he said, stepping forward. “I am Brom. I am a dwarf. I come here meaning no harm. I only ask for safe passage.”

The two golems didn’t react at first. They stood like that for a few long seconds, until Jack started to think they didn’t respond to speech, only proximity, until he finally saw what they were doing. The rocks on their ‘skins’ were multiplying, appearing from inside them. It was forming something like an armor on them, covering them with a layer of stone. And something else too. Mouths had appeared on their heads and when they opened, Jack could see rows of rocky ‘teeth’.

“Alright.” Ava said warily. “So maybe they’re a little bit terrible.”

“Just a bit.” Jack confirmed.

Only when they were completely covered in stones did the golems respond.

“N- Not dwarf.” They graveled, voices overlapping. “OathBREAKER”.

And with hollow roars they charged.