It was dark in the room.
Dark, cold, and smelling of rot and the old blood of things that had died long before them. Aside from the sorry team barricading themselves within, there was nothing there - it was one of those rooms with no clear purpose that were sometimes seen in dungeons, one of the ones that existed because the door added some detail to the place.
Maedhros the Badplanned silently despaired. It was day three in this purposeless room. The very stone walls shook endlessly from the vibrations of bellows and moo’s of the battling minotaurian hordes and their hedonistic feast of death and triumph. The ear-grating sound shook dust and the occasional deadly poisonous spider from the mildewy ceiling.
You know what else shook dust and the occasional deadly poisonous spider from the mildewy ceiling?
THE FUCKING MINOTAUR THAT WAS TRYING TO CRASH THROUGH THE ONLY DOOR.
Maedhros the Badplanned silently despaired some more. Now here he stood, shield raised against a foe he could never face head-on. In the back row, the party’s young priest stammered silent whimpering prayers to Luen. Luen, Maedhros knew, never answered prayers, the goddess as distant from this hellish place as the stars the governed. No one else spoke. It had been three days since they broke into this empty room and hunkered down in hiding. Times of speaking, of regret, were long over.
“AAAH! SPIDEEEER!”
The party stood in dignified silence in front of what was likely an impending TPK.
“GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF MEEEEEEEE-”
Yes, they were about to meet their gods and all knew it, hence the totally. Dignified. Silence.
“AAAAH! AAAAAAH! AAAAAAH! AAAAH!”
Ah, sweet denial, how lovely thy embrace.
Maedhros the elf thought of his home in these final - silent - moments of his. BOOM. The orphanage at the towns stereotypical adventures guild. BOOM. Ah the happy days of his childhood, when he still innocently thought that power and rank would come to him if he simply trained hard and stayed diligent. BOOM. BOOOOM. Now here he was, a grown elf of 150 years, vainly hoping that a mere human youth would beat the ticking of the clock and bring them salvation along with their pizza.
Gods, the distribution of power was truly ridiculously biased and unfair.
BOOM.
BOOOOOOOM.
BOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOMBOOM
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CRASH!
Maedhros braced for impact and the party quickly sidestepped around the door as it flew off its hinges and crashed into the far wall. Many spiders fell from the ceiling, bringing their children and eldery and evacuating their homes. No one screamed this time.
Through the door came a lithe and deadly shadow, stepping over the sparkling light of disintegrating enemies. She was backlit by raging fire and the orchestral cacophony of minotaurian suffering. A shadow fell over her face, her yellow eyes piercing through that ominously flickering darkness anyway, as if the two stark orbs didn’t think darkness was important enough to acknowledge.
In one hand, a long, curved, blade, gleaming in the firelight. In the other, a neatly stacked pile of pizza cartons, perfectly untainted by the blood that splattered the floor outside. Her dark-ish brown hair was waving mystically in a wind that did not blow in the underground dungeon. She had even omitted armor completely, just ignoring it in favor of a plain t-shirt with the words ‘Pizza Shrine’.
[Pizza deliverer - lvl ??]
“Pizza delivery.” Her low, power-laced voice awoke a primal dread somewhere in Maedhros reptile brain.
Then the auras of doom simply died down. In front of them was simply a girl. Perfectly ordinary, stepping into the reach of the party’s magelight. No eyes defied the darkness. No hair billowed in unexplained winds. She waved.
Yep. Distribution of power. It really was so unfair.
-----------
Auria deactivated her skills. She felt her mind return to normal as the churning murmurs of [Delivery Berserker] silenced, and she took a good look at the party in the room.
As usual, Maedhros the Badplanned was the only one she recognized. His party had a pretty high turnover rate.
“Hey Madh, you look like shit. What’s up.” she said with a wave of her blade-wielding hand.
“Don’t what’s up me, girl!” Maedhros sighed through his bared relief. “We’ve been trying to order pizza for three days! Don’t just come in the last silvers of our lives!”
“Ey you know I don’t work on weekends. There’s laws and shit. You ordered a calzone, right?” she said and handed him a box.
“Ah, yes, please.” he said, his arrogant anger falling away and melting like meek snowflakes at the scent of divinity itself.
“So, new record?” Auria said as she handed him the bill. The elf winced at the numbers. “You’re two doors down this time.”
“No need to mock me.” he grumbled. Clearly, the pizza carton cradled in his arms could only do so much at dispelling the steep monetary price of his repeated failures.
“Who said I was? You’re tenacious, at least. And alive, that’s pretty good too. Better hurry up tho if you wanna keep it that way. The path is pretty clear, so just finish your pizza and leave before it ain’t clear anymore.”
….
She had one more delivery to make here. One final pizza left with her.
Skills once again activated, Auria nyoomed through the floor, back up to the entrance, round the corner and off into the woods. Not many people know about it - and it wouldn’t make them any good to know it, either - but there was a back door out here. Only when the dungeon master of the Dungeon of Certain Doom wanted there to be a back door, of course.
It was a pretty ordinary door, exept for the fact that it was standing out there attached to nothing. Just a door, in the middle of the forest. And yet a vague, flickering firelight shone through its small window, as if to say “hey there’s totally an interior here”. Auria knocked.
“Who dares to come here?” asked a voice that was doom itself. It was like crushed gravel somehow forming words. It was low, rumbling, and beastial.
“Pizza delivery.” she said.
“Ooooh!” said the voice and opened the door. A demonic-looking man stood within, with the horns of a ram, skin like molten rock, and armor as black as night. This was Certain Doom, the owner of the Dungeon of Certain Doom. “The next episode of Tortured Souls is almost on. Perfect timing!”
Certain grinned his friendliest smile of too many teeth, accepted the pizza carton, and handed over two small bags in exchange.
“That one’s a small bonus, for your dungeon enthusiast sister.” Auria opened the bonus bag. Within were unpainted miniature figures. Mr. Certain grinned wider. “They’re enchanted, so their eyes glow during player encounters and the little dragon starts spewing smoke. These goblin ones, if you pour in a little more mana before the game starts, they’ll laugh mockingly whenever someone rolls a 1. I put a lot of work into the details.”
“Huh. These are really nice, Certain. I’m sure Lily will love them. Are you ever coming over to finish that game?”
“If I find the time, if I find the time. With my occupation, that’s one of the few things that are limited I’m afraid. You kids should level up some more and reach the boss floor, we could hold the rest of the campaign there if you want. I’ve got the perfect atmosphere, and some nice lodging for adventurers on the penultimate floor. You could stay over for a while if your mom is ok with it. Tortured Souls is starting, but tell the family I said hi, will you?”
The demon waved goodbye. The door clicked close and tracelessly vanished.