They came to a stop a couple of hours later, Yaris waving a hand for them to slow.

There was the smell of smoke in the air behind them now, and the bushes ahead had moved once, but they hadn't been attacked again. Not yet.

There was a tension in the air that even Jump-touch could pick up on. The whole party was on edge, and there was a scent of animal-fear on the smoky wind.

Yaris had steadily grown more and more agitated as they travelled, constantly glancing back, her sword always in her hand and her eyes never still.

Shrike had been shunted into her Heart, and was now sat half-under the bookshelf with his knees up to his chest and eyes closed, looking a strange mix of both serene and unhappy.

"He doesn't like being near the walls," she had told Eim when he asked her how Shrike was doing. "They make him worried. I think he thinks he can fall through them."

Eim had nodded, "they worried me too. Very creepy."

It was an hour, maybe two later, when the group finally slowed to a stop, a little out of breath and worn down from the pace Yaris insisted on setting.

"It's a tunnel?" Ollie asked as they all gathered around the structure she'd stopped beside.

A stone archway, like the entrance to a mine, cut into the slope and stabilised with big, thick slabs of slate. There was no door on it, but no matter how much she squinted, Jump-touch couldn't seem to see more than a half meter or so inside.

"It's not natural, that's for sure." Yaris slowly stretched, rolling her shoulders. "Can you call Shrike out? He's our resident nerd, he might know something."

A moment later Shrike appeared, sitting on the ground in much the same position he'd been inside her Heart.

He stayed there for a moment, inspecting the building, legs crossed and his hands on his knees, cane across his lap.

"It could be a Drop," he said finally, then he looked to Eim. "Those are a thing right, not a myth?"

"A drop?" Yaris questioned him, and he looked back at her.

"It's like, uh, a sub-section of a dungeon. A dungeon within the dungeon, in a way. Inside there'll be either a gauntlet you have to run, or an arena you have to fight in, or sometimes there's puzzles you have to solve. Each one is different, but they always have the same basic rules; only five people can go in at once, and if you solve it without dying or backtracking out, you get a guaranteed piece of loot."

Yaris looked back to the drop. "Well that's handy," she muttered. "We could do with some loot. Can the goats follow us inside?"

Shrike shook his head, as Eim helped him to his feet. "No, once our group is inside, nobody else can enter, and monsters can never access them."

He wavered for a second. "If I had a summon, I don't think they'd count against the limit, because they'd be considered a part of my gear."

Magic was weird.

"That's weird."

Shrike shrugged, "I've only read about them. Eim might know more?"

The aforementioned Eim was frowning. "We monitor where they pop up. This one should be in our books, but..."

He trailed off.

"Nobody here is expecting you to know the books by heart." Ollie slapped him on the shoulder, but he didn't react, still staring at the drop.

"I should though. Even if I didn't pick the class, I'm still…"

He shook his head. The others were looking at him strangely, and Jump-touch wasn't sure why.

"Is it safe to go in?" Yaris said finally, breaking the strange tension in the air. "I mean, is it safer than us staying out here?"

"It might be," Eim said. "They never appear on the first level, and those on the second are more like… Training missions. It shouldn't be lethal. If we're on the third, or fourth level, then it should still compensate for the fact none of us have been in one before. The Dungeon remembers things like that."

"Can't we just run out again if it's bad?" Jump-touch asked.

He shook his head, "sometimes they lock behind you and you literally can't escape until you've solved it. People have been known to starve to death in some of the more difficult ones."

That sounds like a bad way to go.

There was a rustle from somewhere behind them, just a slight movement of leaves somewhere in the otherwise completely silent forest, and Yaris glanced back, hand suddenly gripping her sheathed sword again.

"We go in."

"But what if-" Ollie started, but Yaris was already moving, a moment ahead of the rest of them. "In, now! Move!"

She grabbed Ollie by the arm and wrapped her other arm around Shrike, grabbing him around the torso and pulling him bodily with her. He already had his hands up to cast, and his cane rattled to the floor as he was jerked off his feet by Yaris. "Move, now!"

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As Jump-touch turned to look back, Eim grabbed her by the shoulder. "What-" she started, but she was already being pushed into the Drop, a scramble of arms and legs and sound, as something exploded out of the greenery behind them. "I don't-" but then Eim landed on top of her, somebody's elbow hit her in the side, Shrike was shouting now, and behind them-

Behind them everything was smoke and fire, and ROARING, as the monster which had thrown itself out of the jungle threw itself at the drop, hard enough to make the stones rattle and dust fall from the ceiling.

The air was filling with smoke, and there was another rattle, as something impacted the stones again.

Then there was light, as Eim scrambled off her and Shrike rolled away from her, as Ollie stood up, to go stand beside Yaris.

Yaris was panting as she looked out, her silhouette tall against the roaring wall of fire that was the other side of the doorway, her hair fluttering in the breeze, her sword up. "If it gets inside, then Ollie, take the kid deeper in, Eim-"

"It won't." Shrike said quietly. "We're inside now. The barrier's up."

****

Jump-touch stood with her hand against the barrier, staring at the goat on the other side. It couldn't hurt her, all it could do was rage, rage, rage. Throwing itself again and again against the shimmering magic, until it was exhausted and concussed, the fire of its fur dimming from bright white to blues and reds and oranges.

The Barrier was what they were calling the invisible shield over the entrance to the Drop.

She could almost touch it. She could almost feel its breath as it roared and threw itself against the barrier again, trying to get to the little kobold and the big humans on the other side. The prey it could see, but never reach.

But she couldn't. She couldn't feel its breath, or hear the roar of its anger. She could see the hatred in its blood-red eyes, no flame-filled sockets for this one, but she would always be that bit too far away.

"You're so dramatic," Eim said, walking up. "Stop teasing the poor thing."

"Is it hungry?"

He blinked, and then looked at the animal. "I doubt it?"

"There's so little wildlife here, what does it eat?"

"It's a being of magic, it doesn't eat."

"It eats us!" Ollie shouted from somewhere further back, but they both ignored them.

That seemed wrong, to her. That it didn't have to eat. It looked so real, there were none of the strangenesses that indicated a summoned monster, like with Ink-worm. Apart from the fact it was on fire, it just looked like a regular, if very large and very angry, goat.

"Monsters lose interest the moment you're dead," Eim said, staring at it now too. The others were further in, talking quietly between themselves. They had all quickly bored of teasing the monster. "At least the ones on the higher floors. They can't eat, even if forced. They're beings of magic, like your friend."

Even Ink-worm had enjoyed eating, but then, they had been from a lower floor, and they were an 'area-boss', whatever that meant.

Maybe it just meant they were more intelligent. She didn't know. She was a [Cultural Scholar], not a [Monster Scholar].

On the other side of the barrier, the goat threw itself bodily into the shield again, causing the room to rattle.

"Can't it get in through the sides?"

Eim shook his head. "Even if it destroyed the stones, which it can't, the barrier extends through them. Come on, stop upsetting the poor thing, it should lose interest once we're out of sight."

She cast one last glance at the raging goat. It was huge, almost as big as Ink-worm, and if she hadn't known about the barrier, she would have genuinely been afraid of it bringing the roof down on them all. One of the houses on the Mountain once had collapsed like that, a combination of wood rotting over the Summer and a missing slate. Nobody had been in it at the time, but she remembered the mess of crushed belongings and the huge, broken beam.

"It would be bad if the room fell in," she nodded as she followed Eim, and he gave her one of those looks again. She was going to have to work out what they meant, some day.

"It looks like a pit," Yaris said as they approached. "But there might be more to it than that."

"I never found anything like this when I was exploring." Ollie was leaning against the grey stone wall, hands on the small of their back. "It's interesting!"

"That's because they don't appear on the first level." Eim nudged them gently, and they moved away, making more room for the newcomers.

"Yeah, you said earlier. Still though, it's neat!"

Yaris had changed out her armour, with Jump-touch's help, and was now wearing thin leather gloves, in addition to a a leather surcoat which had been, up until now, folded away in one of the bags.

It looked quite stylish, Jump-touch thought; if still the same shades of boring brown and grey that humans favoured. It matched her hair, and offset her green eyes, and it looked good with her height.

The others looked drab, in comparison. A bit dirty and sweaty, like they'd been on the road for too long. Ollie had a tear down the back of their shirt she was pretty sure they hadn't even noticed yet, and there were little spots all over Eim's shirt, from where he'd hit the goat with his hammer, and it had thrown back embers at him.

"Well we have to do it," Shrike sighed, "there's no getting out of this with the barrier up. It's locked us in."

The others nodded slowly.

Eim took over, "if we head further in then we should find rules. Drops on the first levels never send you in blind. In fact, the guild recommends doing them if you can, because the rewards are generally good. Maybe we'll even level again."

Jump-touch stared down at her hands. Levelling is just holding onto loose magic, right? How much magic can my body hold?

It was a fair question. And why can't I use that magic myself?

She knew that kobolds could. The village had been hoping for years that a kobold with the ability to tend and grow crops via magic would arrive. If the Stone had offered her that ability, she would have taken it in a heartbeat.

Somebody nudged her in the side. Ollie. "What're you up to?"

"I-" she thought about it, "can you level up more than once?"

Ollie shrugged, "I have no idea. Guess we'll find out."

They gestured to where the others were already progressing down the corridor. "Come on, I scouted it out a bit. You get to sit in the stands!"

****

The stands were, as it turned out, what Ollie called the tiered seats around the centre of the arena. It was a large, oval area, lined with white stone and strewn lightly with sand, with a gate at either end.

"It's not an arena," Shrike grumbled from beside her, "it's an amphitheatre, there's a difference, in that-"

Jump-touch wasn't listening, instead staring up at the sky.

It was a beautiful winter's day, blue, with only a few clouds to break up the monotony of an empty sky, and to occasionally drift a touch of shade. The sun was behind her right now, meaning that it would be in the eyes of neither competitor, and it was warm on her back, perfect, and not too hot.

This was despite her own body telling her that it was most definitely still the middle of the night, or early morning at best.

Down on the floor, Yaris was pacing, swinging her sword and occasionally shouting something to Ollie or Eim, who were hanging back by the gate.

The fight wouldn't start until they'd chosen a fighter and the other two had vacated the arena floor, a system set in place to allow her to scope out the area beforehand.

"Alright," Yaris shouted, as Eim and Ollie retreated through the gate, bouncing from foot to foot. "Bring it on!"