[ The 2nd Level ]

It took me a second to adjust to the sudden change of environment. Tom sank to his knees next to me, and embraced Danny and Scar, as if they had been dogs. Boo Ra who had been dancing around, waving his hands in the air, stopped waving his hands in the air, and looked embarrassed. He turned away from us, and took a moment to regain his composure, or at least his façade of composure. I just felt stunned, and stood still. Looking out into the desert, still, absentmindedly holding the crystal crown out in front of me. The desert stretched out to the horizon all around us; vast, and coloured a reddish/orange by a sinking sun. At first, I could only stand and stare at our new surroundings. In fact, it was more like squint; I had gotten used to the gloom of the cavern, and was finding the desert uncomfortably bright. I turned my attention to Boo Ra, [when it came to the surface, the goblins had very small, very closed, minds, but when it came to dungeons, their knowledge was second to none.] “Well, Boo Ra, any idea what is going on?” I waved a hand at our surrounding. Boo Ra did a bit of umming and ahhing and then, without sounding very confident said, “This must be an interdimensional space, the second level, a bit like your inventory, only, bigger, much bigger. I heard dungeons could do this, but I never thought I would see it!” I ignored the remark about the size of my inventory and looked out to the horizon, and then down to the sand at my feet. I bent down and picked some of the sand up and let it trickle back through my fingers. How did all this work? I shrugged; it wasn’t important. “Well, do you have any idea how we get out of here? Back to the cave?” I asked; Boo Ra just shifted about uncomfortably, “all dungeons are different, some have an exit key, some don’t. In some, if you use the original key the right way” he pointed at the crown in my hand, “you can go back, or forward, between levels, others have a different key for each level” the brightness of the desert was starting to give me a headache, “how do we know which sort of dungeon this is?” Boo Ra fidgeted a bit, and then admitted that he didn’t know! I tried flaring manna into the crown again, but it just lay there in my hand and did nothing! So, we set out walking, what else could we do? A gentle breeze blew sand over our tracks, and it felt like we hadn’t moved at all, the ‘sun’ didn’t sink any lower in the sky, but my subconscious instinct said ‘night is about to fall’ and I seemed poised for it, for some change. my headache got worse. The brightness, or rather the intensity of the light was getting to me. We walked on, and nothing seemed to change, time might be standing still for all the progress we seemed to make. The only sound was our plodding steps, and now and then the whisper of the wind over the dunes. And then, as if out of nowhere, a snake, attacked! It was almost a relief to have something happen! The snake was small, and brown, rather nondescript, but it was the first monster we had come across on this level. And it broke the feeling of being outside of time. It came from our right, and went it went straight for Boo Ra. It almost got him too. But goblins have an amazing turn of speed when they need it, and Boo Ra leapt back out of the way in time, [he remined me of an illustration in the adventures hand book of a spider struck by a lightning spell, arms and legs thrown out at strange angles] it was not a dignified escape but it did give Scar enough time to rush in. There was a blur of fur and scales, and then it was over. Scar stood panting, but triumphant as the body of the snake started to glow, and then to fade away, reabsorbed into the dungeon. We looked at one another, and for a while no one spoke, then Tom, with the ghost of a smile said, “that was a close-run thing!” Boo Ra just nodded, “I think we should let Danny go first” Tom continued, “he is immune to poison you know.” I had not known, but I didn’t start an argument over it. We started walking again, and it was not long before we ran into another snake, and then another after that! The snakes seemed to get bigger the farther we walked. I was almost at the point of suggesting we back track when I saw something in the distance. It looked like matchsticks poking out of the sand on the horizon! We walked towards it, and the snakes kept coming, faster, and larger. At one point Danny had about 5 of them hanging off him dragging along in the sand, but he did seem completely immune to their venom, and ploughed on as steady as ever. The matchsticks slowly grew larger, and I could start to make out details. They looked like statues. Odd, mismatched statues but still statues! It looked as if someone had made a giant statue of a bird, and then a statue of a man, but the pieces had somehow gotten mixed up, because the human statue had the birds head and claws, and the bird statue had the man’s head! [the bird statue had its’ base buried in the sand so I couldn’t see if it had human hands] But between the two statues, and overshadowing them; was a huge pole that had a snake skull mounted on it. It was enormous, our entire party could have fitted in the skulls mouth, if it had been living. I looked at the desert around us, wondering if another of these giants was going to appear. But the statues [and skull] were the only feature on a vast sea of sand. I looked at Tom, he was just telling Danny, ‘What a good boy’ he was, and seemed as relaxed as ever. Then I looked at Boo Ra; who was picking his nose, not realising I was watching him. It looked like I was the only one who did not like the look of this. I told myself to ‘stop being a scaredy cat’ and pressed on.

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The ‘sunset’ bathed the statues in red light and made the snake skull look [almost] like it had blood on it. They towered over us as we walked among them. In the sand around them were pieces of other statues, the stray arm, or part of a foot, or head, lay scattered, half covered by the sand. In the centre of the statues, right below the snake skull stood an altar on a raised platform. We walked through the statues towards the altar. No one spoke, a stillness seemed to have settled around us. I looked up at the statues, which stood like giant priests presiding over some lost ceremony. We reached the platform, and stood; looking at an empty altar. It was as we were standing there, not knowing what to do, that the disaster struck!