Several weeks had passed since Sigard became the Dungeon master. Sigard spent his days conversing with the Core, gathering knowledge and figuring out the limits of his authority, till the Golden Tiger or the Mantis Queen brought some animal as Sigard’s meal. There were so many pieces of information he had gleamed so far, from the ecologies of various monsters to occult secrets of magic. So far there had been no major problems, aside from one.
The Goblin General had yet to return so far.
Initially Sigard hadn’t been worried at all. It should have been easy for the general to find a goblin encampment, kill the local chieftain and bring the population back so that they could start on major expansions. Now after so much time Sigard started to contemplate that something happened to the Goblin General out in the Maze.
He had decided to be patient at this early stage, as he was still just figuring out how everything worked. He also held back from spending any Quintessence while he researched the amount of daily income of Quintessence. But now he was growing anxious, he was running low on patience and had a gnawing feeling that he needed to do something.
Fortunately during past few weeks the Core had identified where it was being blocked from tapping into the Maze’s pool of Quintessence. There was some sort of knot that prevented the Core from controlling parts of the Maze, at least that was how the Core explained it. He would need to organize an expedition to the location of this ‘knot’ and find a way to gain control.
Thus he had contemplated taking the Golden Tiger and Mantis Queen to the location. There he could hopefully fix the issue. Then with the increased resources he could start on other projects such amassing and suppling an army, building actual defenses and exterminating his so called ‘masters.’
So that was what drove him gather up both monsters and bring them on this excursion into the wilds of the Maze.
Currently they were in the forest that surrounded the ruined fort. Because of the perpetual twilight atmosphere, Sigard had started calling it the Twilight Forest.
He knew that this was gambling with his own life, the Maze was viciously savage; filled with innumerable ways to get one’s self killed, all too often rather comically. But staring down death while his own body danced like a marionette to the orders of another was something he was all to familiar with. The simple fact that he got to make this decision himself was…exhilarating. Besides he wasn’t going in completely blind, he had spent all of his time in recent weeks extracting whatever knowledge he could from the Core. This combined with experience as a slave branded puppet marching up and down the Maze makes one the closes thing to an expert in the Maze of Beasts.
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Any way Sigard returned his attention to the surrounding forest.
The forest seemed to stretch on for eternity fading into the mist. One couldn’t even tell this was in a cavern as the mist and poor light pressed in from above as all other directions. Every so often there would be a clearing, or a creek running through the forest. There were several rivers that ran underground and through the various caverns deeper into the Maze, and these creeks ultimately fed into them. Herds of deer could be seen poking through the mist as they galloped across the ground.
After several hours of traveling Sigard began to observe something about this forest. The forest looked very sparse and barren, there were many large trees but no new growth or low hanging vegetation. Also there seemed to be quite a lot of deer residing in this forest, but nothing else, nothing vicious, hell there weren’t even any goblins. This was the Maze of Beasts, famed for its dangers, its treasures, its predators. So why weren’t there any vicious beasts here?
Sigard found this to be very strange there should be something else hear, but he wasn’t seeing it. The various regions of the Maze all had there dangers. The Hedge Maze, with its expansive gardens beautiful vistas, bountiful yields and blood drenched thorns. The Shifting Maze, constantly changing layout with the calm silence only broken by the occasional blood curdling scream of its explorers. The Abyss a dark vertical expanse populated by rope bridges and stalagmites. The Root Forest with it’s burrowing creatures and pockets of loose dirt. And on, and on there were innumerable territories like these throughout the Maze.
While thinking upon this mystery Sigard and his beasts came upon a shear rock wall with a cave entrance nearby. The tunnel looked like a perfectly normal natural cave formation with rough rock walls and ground. Taking one last look at the Twilight shrouded Forest behind him, there he could see the outline of several deer looking back at him in the distance.
They walked through the winding tunnels quite a while, the giant mantis queen in front with the golden thunder tiger walking next to Sigard. Meandering through the cave system for what felt like hours, up and down, swerving from one direction to the next, and going through several rooms with forks.
Suddenly The mantis queen screeched reeling back from a sharp turn in the tunnel. There was a bolt lodged in her pincer, fluids leaking out dripping on to the ground. The wounded mantis then pushed forwarded, followed immediately by Sigard urged the golden tiger with him to back up the mantis queen. Sigard came upon a room occupied by a group of Hunters weapons drawn and readying for a fight.