I couldn’t, in full honesty, say that sinking through the sand ranked on my top ten worst experience list, though that wasn’t for lack of trying. I could only be thankful for the small number of levels I’d picked up in Breath Control last semester which kept me from immediately sucking in sand into my lungs.
As I sank deeper and deeper, I found myself filled with an unnatural calm. I did not expect to get out of this situation alive. That was bad. I did not expect Cal or Verin to get out of this situation alive. That was bad too. Amongst other things, it was also sad that I’d never gotten to cook that lizard I’d caught. Probably less bad, but still.
All in all, though, I’d had a decent run, and it was far better than dying in a burning car. If nothing else, dying in the sand would simplify a lot of problems for me. Still linked with Cal and Verin, I squeezed their hands in comfort and simply waited. Not the best way to die, but I accepted it for what it was.
It was with no small level of shock, then, that I felt the sand release its grip on me. For a brief moment, I was falling through the air before landing on something soft, only to have something soft land on me directly afterwards. Opening my eyes revealed the bruised and groaning form of Verin beneath me, with Cal on top, none the worse for wear.
“We survived…” I mumbled the words more for my own benefit than anything else, but Cal picked up on them immediately. As she scrambled to get off of us and to her feet, her self-assured grin never left her face.
“Of course we did! Weren’t you listening up above? Like I was saying, I had a good feeling about the sand. Had some Infiltrator class skills going crazy. Plus, dying to a sandstorm would be way too lame. Did you really think that’s how you were going to go out after meeting literal gods?”
I had not been listening, and judging by Verin’s poorly hidden shaking and shell-shocked expression, neither had she. Either that, or her breath control wasn’t so hot, as she was panting uncontrollably.
Especially after losing her in the storm, I felt like I should comfort her. I bent down and rubbed her shoulders as she ever so slowly calmed down. Whether through sheer willpower or possibly with some input from her Etiquette skill, she collected herself in short order, straightening herself out as she returned to her standard composed state.
“That was outside of my expectations,” she admitted. “Thank you for coming to my aid. I do not relish the thought of being trapped down here by myself. With that said, perhaps we should spend some time determining exactly where ‘here’ is, yes?”
I personally thought it would be fine to take a few more minutes to marvel at being alive, but she had a point. That was doubly true if we couldn’t find a way out, as that would mean we’d only traded a fast death for a slow one.
“Lady Tess. A light if you would?” Despite her high Perception, Verin looked about in a squint. Belatedly, I realized that whatever strange force usually lit the dungeon was much reduced down here. While not pitch black, it was eerily dark. Not that such a thing mattered much to me, but as requested, I cast Illumination a few times. It was one of my better researched spells, and with a few tweaks with Spell Manipulation, I summoned them at a distance, multiple balls of light scattering all around us.
The scene that was revealed was, surprisingly, not just sand.
“Neat. Looks kind of palace-y, doesn’t it? What do you think -- can we find another princess down here?” As unlikely as the latter half of her words were, the prior were entirely correct. Though clearly worse for wear, the tan bricks that made up the walls were covered in gaudy but faded tapestries with a muted purple carpet beneath us. A small stream of sand poured in from the same hole in the ceiling we’d somehow dropped through, though it seemed to disappear when it hit the floor, as if from some cleaning enchantment.
Most notably, though, were the large, gold-plated double doors which appeared to be the only way out.
“I believe the word is ‘palatial’, Lady Calilah. And forgive me for saying so, but if this sand princess of yours would be half as much a handful as you, I am afraid I must advise against seeking her out.” More than anything else, Cal’s words seemed to bring Verin fully back to herself.
Rather than rise to the jab, Cal simply nodded. “Fair enough. I guess there can be too much of a good thing.” Verin scoffed, but Cal pretended not to hear her. “So? Everyone ready? Time to open the big door?”
Was it? Having been blindsided by the sandstorm and losing track of Verin, I felt like it was best to plan ahead a bit more. At the very least, before we opened the door, I cast Sense Minds to make sure the coast was clear on the other side. When it came back blank, I relaxed, but still decided to rotate through my vision abilities.
Even having done so for the express purpose of gathering information, it was still with some surprise when one of them actually registered something. More than that, it was one of the variants I’d almost never had any luck with: Ghosteye.
Two spots on either side of the door were showing up a sort of wispy purple-black that I hadn’t seen before. According to the skill description, Ghosteye was supposed to highlight the recently dead and the undead. I’d even used it once or twice before -- I’d found the bones of a buried shadow wolf back in the darkness dungeon. The visual feedback then, however, had been entirely different.
It was not particularly hard to draw the unfortunate conclusion.
“Two undead waiting on the other side,” I informed the others. “I… I’ll deal with it.” I had agreed to challenge the desert with Cal and Verin despite both of them being weaker in combat. Whether that had been out of blind optimism (unlikely) or general apathy (more likely), it was my fault either way, and we’d almost ended up dead because of it. With unknown enemies ahead, matters of pride and gaining experience would have to be put to the side. From now on, I’d deal with the fighting.
“You got it-”
“I do not believe-”
Cal and Verin started talking over one another, and rather than give them time to come to a mutual conclusion, I left them behind and made a beeline for the door. It was open before they fully finished their sentences.
Much as expected, my enemies were waiting for me. Standing ramrod straight and bedecked in basic chainmail, two skeletons wielded rusty longswords. As soon as they saw me, their bony skulls unnaturally swiveled my way.
They were actually, in fact, not the first skeletons I’d fought, that honor belonging to the conjured skeletons in my Bind Weapon trial. Still, even on the second go around, I had to admit that skeletons were far creepier than movies or games made them out to be. There was something deeply unsettling about their movements that CGI or even stop motion couldn’t fully capture.
Distantly, I was aware that Verin was running up to come help.
It wasn’t needed. And if the skeletons had any sort of special abilities, they never had time to use them.
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The reassuring weight of my hammer appeared in my hands. I spared no expenses, and with my newly upgraded Arcane Armament, I layered both fire and light enhancements onto the hulking weapon. With a dash of Overload Weapon just to make triply sure, I smashed the weapon into one skeleton and then the other.
Even with their armor, the two were pulverized, nothing more than piles of bone shards once I was done. Given that they were undead, I waited a moment to make sure they wouldn’t start reassembling or any such nonsense, but when I saw the kill notifications and they continued to lie there inert, I let myself relax.
Verin appeared by my side a moment later, staring at the re-dead enemies with a complicated expression. “That was… rather effective, I must admit.” Her mouth opened as if to append something extra before she ultimately closed it, only speaking again after staring me down for a while. “I suppose I have no qualms with you serving as our vanguard. We are not, however, helpless. Please feel free to rely on us should you so desire.”
Feeling at least 50% sure that her words were the sort of thing a person was supposed to nod at, I nodded. When she seemed slightly placated and stopped staring at me quite so intensely, I figured I’d made the right choice.
“Cool! Everyone’s made up. I would like to vote that we explore the underground palace now. If we hurry, I’ll even let you guys have some of the treasure we find.” Ignoring the fact that I would be leading the way, Cal raced by, beckoning us on.
With one beleaguered sigh and one indifferent shrug, Verin and I moved to follow her.
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Very quickly, I was forced to reevaluate my opinion that the dungeon had skimped on designing the desert environment. Instead, it seemed that all the resources it had allocated to the desert had simply ended up down here.
Partially, that could be seen just from the details surrounding us. If perhaps lackluster compared to what it would have looked like in its heyday, there truly was no word to describe this place except “palace.” Banners, tapestries, and mosaics covered every other inch of the walls, and while the carpet was certainly a touch threadbare, it was still soft all these years later.
Then again, I wasn’t actually sure if this place was old or if the dungeon had just created it all like this. Odds were actually pretty good in either direction -- if Emperor Diorus had found a natural pocket dimension rather than creating one artificially, it was perfectly possible that some civilization had existed here in the distant past. It was actually a common occurrence for dungeons to incorporate and repurpose existing infrastructure in those cases. From what I’d learned about Sylum’s dungeon, that was likely the case for the forge that had created my hammer, in fact.
Either that, or the dungeon had just made all this up. Who knew?
The rich artwork occasionally took more portable forms as well, and Cal wasted no time snatching gold vases and figurines off of pedestals before seeming to recall that I was the only one with a way to carry them. Whether by sheer luck or her class skills, I was happy to note that nothing she took activated any horrible traps.
That was not to say, however, that there were no traps, which was the other reason I could tell the dungeon had really gone all out.
“Tripwi-”
“Trip-”
“Tr-”
Three voices announced an upcoming trap, mine, then Cal’s, then Verin’s. Despite not being the one to spot the wire first, Cal gave Verin a smug grin.
Detect Trap has reached level 12!
Yes, the area was supposedly meant for those much stronger than us, but when it came to traps, we were laughably overpowered. Even Verin, the one whose class and skills had nothing to do with traps, had passed the first Perception threshold. Much to her well-hidden consternation, that didn’t put her on an even playing field with Cal’s Infiltrator and Trap Detection skills, but three pairs of eyes were still better than one.
Despite a few levels of Trap Disarmament I’d picked up while Cal was with Hexauara, I left all of that work to her now that she was here. One after another, all the standard traps were disarmed or bypassed, ranging from the classic arrows in the walls to the less imaginative pitfall under the carpet.
“Hold.” The hallway curved to the side up ahead, and Ghosteye confirmed that there were some more skeletons just out of sight. I left the others behind and dashed around the corner only to discover my initial assumption had been wrong.
Huh. Not skeletons. The new enemies were wrapped up in thick bandages, somehow shambling towards me despite their eyes being fully covered. Mummies.
It was strangely comforting in a way. Skeletons just like in my Bind Weapon trial, and mummies just like for Arcane Armament. Almost on reflex, I bit into them with a hastily summoned fire sword. They didn’t light up quite as easily as the ones I’d trained on, but a few more cuts with Overcharge Weapon saw them light up soon enough.
I half expected to encounter ghosts or zombies or some other form of undead further up ahead, but as we delved deeper into the ruined palace, we were only met with the two types of foes.
Over. And over. And over.
Eventually we had to admit to ourselves that, much like our trip through the desert above, this would not be a one-day affair. I briefly wondered if we would eventually pass from the desert biome into the darkness section, but a check of the compass revealed that we were headed almost backwards towards the cabin. If that was the case, then theoretically, we could have as much as eight days to travel. More if the hallways looped around enough.
As we fell asleep on the first night after walling off the area ahead and behind us with ice walls, Cal did her best to cheer us up. “Hey, at least you get to sleep on a carpet instead of on the sand, right? And I’m, like, 90% certain I won’t have to wake you up to deal with a scorpion attack while we’re down here.”
Truly, sometimes it was the little things.
For five days we wandered about, often having to backtrack as we encountered dead ends. On a few occasions, we found rooms that were less uniform -- an old armory filled with unusable, rusty equipment; the non-fantasy kind of dungeon, complete with some empty holding cells; and a run-down barracks where I was forced to smash through so many skeletons that my stamina sank to its halfway point.
Of much more interest was the handful of secrets we found nestled within the palace walls. Or perhaps “we” was being unfair -- for once, I was entirely outclassed when it came to locating secrets. Whether it was from Cal massively leveling up her class skills since last I’d delved with her, or from her being far more familiar with finding secrets within palaces, she essentially made my skills an afterthought.
The bulk of the secrets were simple passageways, which we at least hoped were saving us time and spitting us out closer to our end goal, whatever that was. A smaller number revealed concealed compartments and rooms, but of a much less fleshed out variety than official “hidden rooms” in dungeons. Frustratingly, most of the treasure we found was in the form of precious metals. While I grabbed it all, we had little use for wealth these days.
The only actual upgrade we found was an ornate dagger with a golden handle, somehow untouched by the ravages of time. Naturally, it went to Cal who was exceptionally happy given that most of her weapons were locked away in her spatial pouch still. As if specifically created for the desert, it had a weak armor penetration enchantment and could cut through sand more easily.
Even had she not been the only dagger-wielder amongst us, Cal had more than earned it. Ignoring her secret-finding abilities, once it had become clear that we didn’t know how long we would be down here, she hadn’t let us give her any food. Not that we were going to immediately run out, but she was adamant that whatever strange ability she had would cover her.
In the end, however, her sacrifice proved unnecessary. Though in theory it was impossible to know where the palace ended, on our sixth day, all of us agreed that we’d reached our goal.
“Oooh. Big.” If a bit obvious, Cal’s words echoed my own thoughts on the matter.
Two doors loomed above us, each of them made from pure, solid gold. The only larger doors I’d ever seen were those to my Dungeon of Tragedies, and given that those weren’t exactly physically real, it wasn’t a fair comparison.
While somewhat expected, Ghosteye revealed that there were indeed some number of undead inside, though the range of the skill made it unclear just how many we’d be facing.
In a nicer world, we would have refreshed ourselves for a while, or maybe even camped out for another night before we made our move. Failing that, we could have talked strategy for a while, preparing for whatever we might find inside.
As the sandstorm had already proven, though, this dungeon realm was rarely so kind to us.
With a great, creaking groan, the massive doors began to open.