“You all ready to do this!?” Jackson shouts to his party, giddy enthusiasm pouring out of him like a dam bursting.

“Damn right I am!” Morris responds with a smirk and a flourish of his machete.

“Oh put that shtupid thing away would ya? We all know ya’re just gonna hoide in the back with ya’re bow.” Eimme lets her full orc-y accent into her voice as she jabs Morris in the rips with her fingers.

“I am not!” Morris cries in defense after jumping out of the cleric’s poke-range.

“Let’s… Let's all not get too excited, o-ok?” Maylee says shyly from the back of the group, the half-elf’s ears drooping downward slightly as she does.

Jackson examines his party of four. It had been only a couple months ago when they got together and decided to become an adventuring party. In just three or so months, he’d gone from being a random peasant to a full blown fighter, with his own longsword, armor, and canvas rucksack full of adventuring supplies. He remembers how Morris tripped over his own feet in their first fight, and ended up with the hots for Eimme because of how much time she spent with him treating his self-inflicted knife wound. And…

Jackson reaches down and holds out his hand, smiling to himself as he feels Maylee take it in hers without hesitation. For as shy as their party’s sorcerer is, despite her stunning looks, it had still been Maylee that had first approached Jackson in his tent after their encounter with the bandits…

“Alright! So, let’s go over what we know.” Jackson lets his passion taper off as he tries to switch into ‘serious mode’. Or at least whatever passes for it for him.

“Right, um… wasn’t it that a priest k-kidnapped someone?” Maylee half-asks half-states as she turns to Jackson, her cheeks red.

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“Right, and supposedly this dungeon is where hunters have been noted as disappearing, so it’s probably here.” Morris finishes the thought Maylee was likely forming with a smirk, putting away his machete and drawing the map from Eimme’s pack. He traces a line from the village to the location they were currently at, and taps on the label ‘Abanboned Dungeon’, and points a thumb behind himself at the stone structure and iron doors. And then Eimme slaps him with the back of her hand.

“Don’t steal moy stuff! And you still can’t fuckin’ spell!” Eimme growls at him, while shaking his shoulders like a terrier. Jackson hears a sigh from melee as the couple looks at Morris and Eimme’s antics.

“Right, so what’s the plan for clearing it?” Jackson asks flatly, which prompts both Morris and Eimme to stop fighting mid-headlock.

“Uh… Dunno…” Eimme says with a dumb look on her face, and Morris mimics her dumbass response by nodding as much as he can from in between Eimme’s forearm and chest.

Jackson sighs even louder and heavier than Maylee has, before turning to Maylee and nodding before breaking off of the hand holding and grabbing the abandoned map up off the ground.

“So we’re going on a dungeon delve, what do we have for supplies? I have two torches in my pack, I know Maylee has one, that should be enough light. How much rope do we have?”

“Eight feet!” Morris replies, now freed from the headlock and back into actually competent ranger mode. “And I have the ball bearings for trapfinding, plus half of the holy water n’case its undead.”

Jackson nods and turns to Eimme, who simply pulls out two flasks of holy water from her own pack in lieu of verbally responding. Lastly, Jackson turns to Maylee. He already knows the contents of her stuff completely, hell, he was carrying half of it, bur moreso just wants to make sure she knows what they’re supposed to do.

“I-I have the-the book with information on common monsters… monster… the monster manual! That one!” Maylee eventually manages to find the words she was looking for and nods up and down adorably when she does.

“Right, so we go room by room, I’ll go first, then Eimme, then Morris, then Maylee, if we hit an encounter the standard response is for me to protect the casters and Morris to try and land a few shots, right?” Jackson finishes his heroic party-leader planning session to the nods and verbal confirmations from his friends, and puts his hand into the middle of the group. “On three?”

Oh yeah, this is gonna be a fucking breeze. He thinks to himself.