I was in a bad mood. That wasn’t unusual these days, small things seemed to set me off so easily, I mean here I was in the heart of the earth and I was still the inventory! The Old One had decided to move the Goblin camp, I thought this was a little over cautious, but the goblins followed him as if he were an oracle; and so the camp was moved. And now there was no handy waterfall right at our feet, all the water had to be carried in! And that is how I found myself with the job of carting water. There was some logic to it with my inventory I could carry more water than 10 goblins. I hadn’t minded so much at first but the daily grind of it was starting to get to me. I trudged on round the large boulders that formed a sort of passage to the New Camp and then out into the open cavern. It looked very different we had seen when we first arrived. It had been a cold world of shadow and pale light coming from a single dungeon entrance. Now it was a kaleidoscope of vivid colours competing and mingling over the landscape. Each dungeon emitted its own colour and intensity of light, over here pale blue, over there intense red, then a bit of yellow mixing in. It was a beautiful everchanging landscape. But under it a battle was raging, that was what the goblins said; the Old One told us that Azure had been one of the biggest dungeons, a stabilizing influence on the others, but now Azure was gone and it was a free for all as the dungeons struggled with one another to gain dominance. I walked on towards the waterfall wondering if my traps had caught anything, I would check them after I had got the water. The traps were just holes in the ground with my imitation spell cast to hide them. I could maintain the spell just fine but a link was always there in the back of my mind. If I lost the link, the spell would fail. I arrived at the waterfall, this was the most dangerous part of getting water; because two dungeons were in the process of claiming this territory. I wasn’t worried I could just run away if I needed to; dungeons are very territorial, so as soon as you are out of their space, they give up attacking you. But if they find you in their territory then it is ‘no prisoners taken!’ So, I scanned the area carefully before heading for the water’s edge. I started pulling the water bags out of my inventory and dunking them in the water, better to be quick than caught. [there was no wood down in the cavern, so all the water bags were made from leather or other animal parts that you don’t want to think about too much] I had filled about 2/3rds of them before I was interrupted by the crab! Its’ carapace was about the size of my palm and it was pale blue in colour. [Like the dungeon it came from] It came at me from the pool with raised pincers, clearly planning to attack. I kicked it back into the water as soon as it made land, it skipped once, like a stone on the water’s surface, and then sank back out of sight. I plunged another container into the water, now in a real hurry to be done. When I tried to pull the container out, and it didn’t budge, what was going on? I pulled harder and then saw the claw coming up out of the water, holding the other end of the container, I let go of the container and stepped back. That was the biggest crab claw I had ever seen! The crab attached to it was now making its’ way out of the water, and, at a glance I could see that I was out matched! I cast fear, [which was now at level 2] turned tail, and bolted. ‘Put to flight by some crabs! How embarrassing!’ I thought as I ran. But what was I supposed to do? I had no offensives spells, and no weapon. Normally I would just drop rocks on anything in my traps until the experience notification told me it was dead. I ran on, ‘I must be out of the crab territory by now,’ there was a stony mound to my left, I decided to hide behind it and just make sure nothing was following me! I came round the mound at a jog, and tripped over a goblin. I saved myself from a broken nose by a narrow margin, but I did take the skin off my knee. “Where did you come from?” Tom asked from behind me, his voice cheerful as ever, “Boo Ra, are you alright?” I turned to see him bent over the goblin, was the goblin ‘alright’ I scowled and coldly said “I was getting water” I was finding Toms cheerful mood to be clashing with my own, “more to the point what are you doing here?” Tom seemed to remember that they were, actually doing something, rather than just admiring the scenery, “Oh! We nearly lost him! Boo Ra are you alright to walk, we will have to hurry. Come on then, before he disappears!” still feeling annoyed, but also curious, I trailed after them. I saw what was going on a moment later while I was hiding behind another rock pile with the others. We were following a goblin, normally goblins are very energetic, rather mischievous creatures. But this one was looking miserable, he moved like a sleepwalker; slowly and not aware of the world around him at all! “What happened to him?” I asked Tom in a low voice, “not sure” Tom answered, “we went to see if Pearl and Sandy had met yet, and to see if we could pick off any stragglers. We got into a four-way fight, it was a bit chaotic, and the next thing I know Boo Ra comes running up to me and saying, ‘one of the goblins is wandering off!’ So, we chased after it.” I turned to Boo Ra “what happened?” The small goblin fidgeted, shifting his wait from one foot to the other; “he was fighting, fighting well, then he suddenly went… strange.” “What was he fighting?” I pressed and Boo Ra fidgeted more, “a small prickly, with red spots” I considered this, a small prickly was a hedgehog type creature and was fairly harmless. I had caught a few in my traps, but had never seen one with red spots, maybe it was a new variant?

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

[ The 1st Level ]

We followed the little goblin with the red spots, it was easy as he did not seem to be aware of us at all. Soon we started to meet other creatures, all traveling in the same direction, there were some more hedgehog type creatures some pale blue crabs, and a newly hatched lizard. None of them tried to attack each other and they all seemed to have the same destination in mind. They were all heading towards a crack in the cavern wall and out of the crack streamed bright red light. The light fell on a throng of creatures as they filed through it. We observed them from a safe distance, stretched out on the ground, [this part of the cavern was still fairly dark,] “well, it looks like this is as far as we go” I said “we can’t just leave!” Tom protested, “not after following him all this way. We have to see what is going on inside!” I looked at Tom, there were times when, I found his delusions about living in one of the old legends very annoying! “Look!” I said trying to sound calm and reasonable, “that is a dungeon, we can’t just walk in there say; ‘just browsing,’ and walk out again! That is how you get torn to shreds!” “But we can’t just leave him there! We-” “-Look!” Boo Ra interrupted us, jumping up and down by my elbow and pointing, “up there!” Tom and I looked. At first, I couldn’t see what had gotten Boo Ra so excited, then I saw it. High up, above the entrance and a little to the right, more of the bright red light was shining through the rough wall. “Of coarse!” Tom said, clearly as pumped as Boo Ra, “one of the goblins told me that that the rocks will go very porous here, if they aren’t part of a dungeon! If we climb up there, we might be able to see what is going on!” I objected to this, but my objections fell on deaf ears. We headed for the wall and started climbing. “And now what?” I asked a few minutes later. We were clinging to the wall of the cavern just below the light. None of us were in a position to move for fear of coming off the wall and plummeting. The stupidity of this idea was really coming home to me, I just hoped Tom would see sense! But Tom just smiled. His face had gone from concentrating, hard, to serene! “Don’t worry. Help is on the way!” Tom said, I supressed my immediate impulse to kick him off the wall, and waited. There was the sound of scrabbling sound followed by an ecstatic; “Danny!” from Tom. And a second later Danny, Toms new pet lizard, climbed past me, heading up the wall. It took me a moment to realise what Tom was thinking, and I didn’t like it much. Danny like all his kind had a club tail, a tail that was now raised; ready to make a new hand hold for me, it came down. Hard. Dust and little rock fragments filled the air and fell past me. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall in front of me. Reflected on the disaster that was my life. Danny made a few more holes, and then, just as I started to climb again, a large chunk of the wall fell through in front of me and I found myself staring into the dungeon. The sight was strange; there were creatures from every dungeon I had seen, and several creatures I didn’t recognise at all. There were blue crabs, like the ones I had run away from, there were lizards like Danny, there were snow elementals, large snowy creatures that often came in strange shapes, there were the hedgehog creatures, and lot of other strange creatures too. They mingled with each other, standing around in small groups, or by themselves. And the entire scene was bathed in a bright red light [almost pink in some cases] the light came from veins in the walls, the veins were as thin as spider webs and would have been invisible if they hadn’t been glowing. In the centre of this room, surrounded by the monsters that should have been attacking each other, stood a raised platform, [ a dais if you like] on this platform sat a crystal crown. It looked strangely out of place. I pointed at it, and Boo Ra excitedly said “it must be the key*.” Tom was not interested in the key; he was busy scanning the horde for the stray goblin. Tom started to lean in through the hole so he could see the room better. I looked around too. I couldn’t help but think that this would be an awesome place to cast a few illusion spells from. I could just picture the effect of a fury spell on that mass of monsters, and we would be safe and sound up here on the wall. It was at that moment when the wall started to crumble. It started slowly; just a little trickle of dust, a pebble being dislodged, and then… the piece of wall with us on it became detached, and we found ourselves sliding down the wall into the mass of monsters. We reached the bottom with a roar of noise, sand, dust, and stones settled around us. For a long moment all the monsters just looked at us, and we looked at all of them, and nothing moved. And then everything moved! The next few moments were chaotic blur, there was no time for careful plans or clear thought, Boo Ra squeaked something about ‘getting to the key.’ We were running, without really knowing where we were going, any second expecting to find an arm missing. I honestly don’t know how we got to the centre of the room in one piece. But we did, and I found myself holding the ornate crystal crown. And nothing was happening, all the creatures were rushing closer, all coloured with the red light, Boo Ra was hoping around flapping his hands, squeaking in a high voice “pour manna in it! Pour manna in it!” I fumbled the crown and then, in a panic, flared manna. There was a turning sensation at the bottom of my stomach and my sight went strange, the world seemed to bend and then, reshape itself, and there we were; standing all alone in a desert.

*( Note: the key in this instance is a port key to the 2nd level)