“It wasn’t Spark, and you know it,” Lacey complained to Colt as they waited for the last group to exit the dungeon. “You aren’t really going to keep it as a pet, are you?”
She was referring to the crocorat that Colt had just released onto the floor of their control room the night before. It had gotten to her book in the middle of the night. The pages had been half-shredded by the time she’d woken. Ginger had found the mess before Lacey could protest. It had been hit with a clean spell instead of a mend one. The book was now gone. Lacey hated the feeling of unfinished plotlines that could have been the best book she’d ever read. Colt had offered her his book, but it was the third in a series that he’d read but she hadn’t started.
“I don’t see the single mage anywhere,” Colt tried to avoid the subject.
“Great, but if it had been Spark, there would have been singed edges to the pages,” Lacey wasn’t to be distracted.
“Spark probably ate the poor thing anyway,” Colt flipped screens between Kat’s run and the last group. They were the only ones left and were both making their way to the exits. They’d kept an eye out for the mage, but no solo adventurers had sneaked in this time. “I can’t find him.”
“That or it tried to take on Ginger this morning,” Lacey mumbled around a dum dum sucker stuck in her cheek. “Spark doesn’t have crocodile or rat breath, so it wasn’t her.”
Colt gave her the arced eyebrow look but otherwise kept silent. They’d spent the morning coming up with ideas for new levels for the dungeon. They had a new whiteboard full of ideas. The Hall of Doors was almost fleshed out completely. The adventuring party would have the quest to open exactly five doors. Each door could only be entered by a single adventurer and only once. It was five solo fights with not much more than a riddle on the door that would help them make a decision about who would go into each room. Behind each door was a copy of the habitat of one of their dungeon denizens. If the adventurer cleared the room, the next adventurer could choose the next door. If they all cleared their individual doors, then they completed the level.
Another, the Mac and Cheese Maze was less of a full concept and more of a hint of one. Elbow-macaroni-shaped tunnels intercepted in a 3d maze inverted dome filled with slimes and molds. Colt had decided that he was going to try to drop a 3d model using actual mac and cheese pasta and see what the pedestal did with it. Lacey was pretty sure that it would just be a mess. Maybe it was an excuse to get some mac and cheese that he liked.
Lacey was pulling a lot on her favorite Grimm stories like Bluebeard or Rumpelstiltskin. Colt was more random with things like The Floor is Lava and Shrinky Dinks, which was a level where the adventurers would appear to have been shrunk down into barbie-sized folks navigating an Elmira’s dollhouse setting. She’d vetoed his idea of using a Let’s Make a Deal format. He’d vetoed her idea of finding a way to use The Girl Who Trod on Loaf. They’d combined his idea of simulating a sensory depravation tank and her idea of using the See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil Monkeys for a level and called it the 3 Monkeys.
It had been a productive morning all around. On top of the idea session, they’d each churned out a single floor that they were ready to drop in as soon as the dungeon turned green. Lacey might have managed more than one except that she’d spent some time looking over the rest of the quests that they still had stacked up in their dmail. Since they were just waiting on the Back-40 to finish up on its own, they could take on a few more. The quests had turned out to be pushing for the exact things that would help them Tier up. The difference was that the quests included treasure chests that held treats.
“I’ve heard of crocodile tears, but never crocodile breath,” Colt teased her about her choice of words. “I think you’re just making that up. I’ll buy you a new book.”
“When?” Lacey demanded, shaking her now-empty sucker stick at Colt. She took out another sucker and unwrapped it, the newest wrapper sailing halfway to the garbage before falling far short.
“The next time we go home for Sunday brunch,” Colt promised, taking a pen from behind his ear and making a new note in the margins of his newest floor level.
“If we keep taking timed quests, we won’t have time for Sunday brunch until we hit the next Tier and then we’ll be embroiled in the next challenge or crisis,” Lacey popped a sucker out of her mouth to say.
“Do you think they know that we work for food?” Colt tried another distracting topic.
Lacey glared at her lollipop for a moment, then shook her head. “I think they just know that sugar is a good motivator for people like us.”
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“How are we not fat?” Colt frowned at his waistline, but it hadn’t changed.
“You look fine,” Lacey said and stuck the lollipop back in with a glare at him.
The dungeon turned green, saving Lacey from more of that nonsense. They dropped in their stack of papers on their way to the surface via elevator. Colt was off with Kat so quickly that Lacey barely got a wave from the girl before they were off on a walk near the forest. That left Lacey with Benny again to take care of business. Lacey rolled her eyes at the couple’s retreating backs.
“We did see a mage expelled from the dungeon,” Benny replied when asked about his side of the ejection of the lone mage. “We thought no one was left inside. Then I saw a flash of red robes as he flew out of the fourth entrance. At first, I thought we’d been attacked from behind, but once we questioned him, it was clear that he was somewhere he didn’t belong.”
“He flew out of the entrance?” Lacey chuckled, letting Bernard lead her in a slow walk around the perimeter of the growing walls. They were up to Lacey’s hip.
“At least 10 feet in the air when I drew my sword,” Benard smiled and mimed the arc with his hand. “We expelled him from camp. He won’t be allowed back in.”
Lacey spent a few minutes explaining to Bernard what they thought of who the lone mage was as they walked. The roof was being put on the barracks using a pulley system and clay tiles. The tiles were made of clay that was being baked solid by mages casting fireball carefully over the tops of a whole yard full of them.
“I’ve half a mind to expel all the mages from the site, but that would put us far behind on the building construction,” Bernard tsked, his brows furrowed. “Instead, I shall expel only the mages between the levels of 10 and 13. There are only 3 of them. We can spare them. The issue I see with that is that you have opened up enough Mage Gauntlets for 30 mages and I can’t fill that even with those 3 mages.”
“I hadn’t thought you’d ever lack in mages,” Lacey joked gently. “It feels unfair to send them away just because Dom is their level.”
“He is likely between 12 and 13 at this point, but it is better to not take chances,” Bernard focused on the distance until he found a person to wave over.
“When we saw him in the dungeon, he was already level 12, and that was yesterday, when we ejected him,” Lacey reported as a young squire darted up.
“It isn’t likely he’d lose levels, so I could satisfy myself with just 2 mages,” Benard gave an order to the squire to fetch his second-in-command. “They are slackers anyway. If they’d been working as hard as they should, they would be higher level with all the work around camp. I’ve been looking for an excuse to get rid of Humphrey’s boy anyway, so I’ll send the level 10 as well.”
“I’m happy to provide an excuse if you want it,” Lacey smiled. “If you see any more folks go sailing out of the dungeon, you know what to do.”
“Indeed,” Benny’s lips twitched with mirth.
“We’ve been thinking about adding more gauntlets, but if you don’t need so many of them, we could pull back.”
“I would rather send for more mages, at the very least, if you don’t mind,” Benny suggested. “It will take a few weeks, but it would be well worth it. The level and skill gains are well worth the time spent traveling out here.”
“We could always repurpose the Gauntlets we have for other classes,” Lacey turned the concept to where she and Colt had decided to go anyway. They only got credit for unique levels. Changing just a few aspects of a Gauntlet to allow for a different class was easier than creating a whole new themed level. “I could easily modify half of the Gauntlets we currently have into Rogue challenges by morning. I have some ideas for healers and fighters, but maybe you could give me some ideas for a bard Gauntlet?”
“We’ve only a handful of bards in camp,” Benny beamed, his mouth saying one thing and his ego wanting another. “It would hardly be worth all that.”
They spent the rest of their lunch hour tossing around ideas for Gauntlets for all the classes in camp. Lacey sat atop the waist-high outer wall enjoying the spring weather as much as the ideas. Halfway through, they were interrupted politely by a man only slightly younger than Bernard. Bernard stipulated orders to have one of the men head back to Hamburg to fetch more adventurers. With 20 entrances where there had only been a few before, it only made sense to bring out more groups.
It hit Lacey that they’d come a long way in a very short time. While it seemed like they were behind and racing to keep ahead of the next disaster, they really had done a lot in the few weeks that she and Colt had been building up the dungeon. It was easier to see Bernard’s budding settlement as a feat of engineering than it was to acknowledge that she and Colt had done just as well in very little time.
“I hate to sound like a broken record, but it would be easier to recruit a new set of adventurers if we had a catchy title for the dungeon,” Bernard turned back to Lacey, his aide jogging back toward the main tents to relay his orders.
“Colt is campaigning for the A-mazing Descent, but I’m still pushing other ideas,” Lacey quipped. At Bernard’s blank look, she explained further, “Because most of our levels have some sort of maze in them?”
“Ah,” Benny winced in sympathy. Yes, the man was growing on her. “We can wait for a name that befits both your ideals.”
“They must have a class on diplomatic wording,” Lacey shook her head. Colt and Kat were returning from their own disappearing act, faces flushed. Lacey didn’t want to know.
“Several,” Benny’s lips twitched in amusement again. “Extra for bards.”
“Thanks, Benny,” Lacey hopped down from the wall to meet up with Colt for the quick walk back to the dungeon entrance. “See you tomorrow.”
She left Benny with an indulgent smile on his lips and Kat at his side. She didn’t tease Colt about his red cheeks or the fact that his eyes were totally obsessed with the girl he was leaving outside the dungeon. There was time enough to refocus him once he was back inside. With all his classes in diplomacy, Bernard probably didn’t tease Kat either. It was a shame. There was just so much fuel for the ribbing, it was practically littered across the ground in their wake.