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Iris seemed less than happy to see the faintly glowing blue fluid. "Great, what's Tark going to want in order to tell us what that is? Fireworks? A cattle prod?”

Molly and the boy immediately shushed her to be quiet. A bit too late.

A portable lightning stick, no, I have kobolds for that. But explosives specifically made for entertainment that came in bright colors, that you can fire at things. Yesssssss….

Bee meanwhile had picked up the potion and giggled. “So I don’t know why it's molded and etched to look like a Gatorade bottle, but it says it's Mana flavored so I don't think we need Tark to tell us what it is."

Mana? Oh, that's what they call innate magic here.

I don’t like it. Sounds more like something you would eat.

After some more discussion, Bee wrapped it up with the cloth they had given her to protect her neck to instead protect the potion and stuffed it in her coat pocket.

Then they came to the stairs.

They were made of the same dark orangish red stone made of compressed dirt as the rest of the dungeon, but they were also lit up with a bright red light. Seven steps led to a landing then another seven to a landing with the word “Trap” carved into the wall with an arrow pointing down.

Alelan frowned at me when I put the warning in, but as it was their first trap I didn't want anyone getting hurt. Or have an excuse to whine about it all the way back up to the house.

I’m looking at you Iris.

Ernesto cautiously went down a few steps, testing each one with one foot before putting his full weight on it. "It looks like we have to go down there and then turn around the corner to get to the next level."

He stared down for a bit, then looked over his shoulder at the women. “I’ll go first. It’s my job.”

Bee looked back and forth from Iris to Molly. “Shouldn't we tie a rope to him or something, so we can stop him from falling into a pit?”

The older two women looked at each other before Molly turned to Bee, "That's a good idea, I don't think Tark would drop any of us far enough to seriously hurt us. But we should treat this like we are in real, deadly danger.”

It turned out they didn't have a rope. Instead, Molly made the trip up three flights of stairs, then out to the garage to get an orange length of electrical wiring called an extension cord.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I watched them tie it around Ernesto's waist and let out its length as he went down the steps, but I did not see it extend in any way. It stayed exactly the same length.

The boy reached the lower landing but stopped on the last step above it as he grasped the dividing wall to look around the corner. “It goes straight about ten feet to a dark room.”

After looking around, and first lightly stepping on and then kicking the floor, the boy stepped onto the landing.

Underneath the first step at the top of the stairs, a thin barrier was slid to the side by a kobold, it pulled the stoppers on five bottles of cooking oil which had been set on their sides with the bottom raised to allow the oil to flow freely down the steps.

Iris was the only one to have gone down a few steps, and as she turned to look at the sound of the gurgling bottles she let out a yelp as her foot slipped out from underneath her. Sending her falling over backwards. She ended up suspended leaning over backwards by the extension cord in her hand and under one arm, as Molly and Bee braced themselves to hold her up.

The boy meanwhile was nearly pulled off his feet as the weight of an elderly woman was applied to the line tied around his waist which pulled him back with his heels hitting the bottom steps. He only stayed upright by grabbing the dividing wall in one hand.

After the other two managed to pull Iris back up to her feet, they got her the rest of the way up the stairs. Molly wisely figured out that it would amuse me to no end to watch them slip and fall down the steps and instead made another trip upstairs.

For two large bags of the dry pellets Buttercup liked to relieve himself in.

While I was disappointed to not see anyone slip and fall, they did show some creative thinking. Which was nice, I guess.

Once past the oil soaked landing, they attached their headlamps and took out their light rods to light their way into the salt mine.

A forty foot across maze like room with walls coated in crystallized salt, and with thick pillars and short walls of the same. All of it shone and glistened in the beams of their lights.

Bee spotted it first. “I think I see stuff in those crystals. Wait, is that salt?”

Back home, a dungeon with a salt mine would bring people from hundreds of miles around to mine away under some adventure's protection. Filling and hauling off entire wagon loads of the valuable and useful stuff.

Here, they would only chip away at the salt to get to the prizes I had buried within. If they choose to.

Wandering into the room, they all became too distracted by the scenery and the half visible objects within the salt to stay on guard. Or to think about the crunching sounds being made by their feet on the salt crystals covering the floor.

Crystals that didn’t make anywhere near as much noise under tiny Kobold feet, but did guide the mine defenders right to them.

They got Molly first. “Ow! Something just cut me on the leg!”

Bee let out a shriek as she turned to see the white scaled kobold pulling a pairing knife out of the back of her leg and stepping back from her to stand in the entrance.

The young mage pointed her finger and cut loose with her flame, engulfing the grinning lizard who stood in a puddle of the cooking oil that had trickled all the way to the entrance of the room.

Alelan had approved of this. Her charge had been enjoying the power of flame a little too much. And in my defense, they did have a healer.

The oil wasn't much more than a trickle, so it wasn't so much a burst of flame than a sputter. A sputter that followed the trickle of oil down the corridor, up the steps, all over the landing, and up more steps to the still partially filled bottles.

Cooking oil also makes a lot of smoke. Which began filling billowing up to the first challenge room and heading up the steps to the house above.

As well as starting to drift into the salt room.

No one was happy. Iris kicked one of the salt columns. “Tark, you better not burn down my house!”

Molly had other concerns. “We need to get across the room and see if there are other stairs so we can get to below the smoke. Tark has to have some way of getting fresh air down here so we should be safe.”

I thought about dismissing the remaining four quick kobolds in the salt mine. But no. They could handle them, even if I felt like a brute making them fight under these conditions. They needed the challenge.

The chaos of the lighting, the unfamiliarity of the new room, as well as the smoke starting to fill the air, meant the quickbolds got in a lot of cuts. But the spindly little lizards were also strangely fragile, and lighter than the regular kobolds. It only took a solid hit, or a couple of glancing ones, to put them down.

Once on the new set of steps, Bee broke down, saying “Sorry” over and over as well as apologizing to Iris for “Burning down her dungeon.”

Great. I made a girl cry, and you know, almost killed everyone with smoke inhalation.

I hoped Alelan was happy since no one else was.