After getting caught in a sandstorm the first time we’d tried to clear the desert, it would have been nice to say that I was prepared for anything now. Naturally, though, this was a lie. I knew that the dungeon could throw any manner of strangeness our way, but in the end, there was no real way to mentally prepare myself for anything.
As the three of us at last crossed the line that separated the desert from the darkness and began to cautiously move forward, I could thus hopefully be forgiven for being caught off guard.
Not at first — for a good five minutes, we saw absolutely nothing. That was doubly true for Cal and Verin who lacked the same degree of darkvision that I had, literally seeing nothing but empty black all around. Admittedly, I wasn’t much better, seeing nothing but empty gray, but at least I knew that meant there was nothing ahead rather than there being something lurking right next to us in the darkness.
When at last, something did change, it was subtle. To our sides and directly above us, the darkness seemed to become a bit more… solid. As if stuck in a state of partial rendering, flecks of opaque darkness hung in the air, only to grow as we continued on. Curiously, that darkness seemed to be attached to us, too. Turning us slightly to the side, it turned with us, always keeping us snugly within its confines.
Naturally, I relayed this information to the others which sparked a round of poking and prodding, with all three of us attempting to pierce the speckled darkness with our magic. When it didn’t react in any way, our choices seemed to be “run back home” or “get over it,” and with a collective shrug, we settled on the latter.
As if spurred on by our choice, the darkness solidified faster and faster until it fully materialized, an archway of pure darkness beckoning us through. Having already made peace with our choices, we prepared ourselves as best we could and stepped through.
Immediately, our surroundings changed. Whereas before, I could see far in all directions, now, two black walls penned me in on either side. Lacking any ceiling, the new environment still allowed me to see the chaotic mana-sky above, but only a thin strip of it, the high walls blocking all else. Before us, a narrow pathway stretched on, and in the distance, I could see two more paths split off from it at an intersection.
Very quickly understanding what I was up against, I grabbed the others and yanked them back, worried it was already too late. To my great relief, the arch had not disappeared, nor was our trip one way. The moment we stepped back through, the walls vanished, and I could see the dessert way back behind us.
“Tess? You all good?” Cal placed a hand on mine, which had yet to release her arm.
“Labyrinth,” was all I said in return.
Bless my companions, for they understood what I meant with a single word.
“Am I to understand that the archway deposited us into a maze of sorts? How peculiar. Is there any way to traverse this region while avoiding having to navigate a labyrinth?” Unfazed, Verin nudged the archway with her foot, missing it the first few times until she found it in the darkness.
Before we started seriously prepping, we tried just that. We switched directions. We tried outrunning the archway. Flying over it. Everything failed. Admittedly, it was possible that one of us could get around it if the other two stayed put, but for obvious reasons, we were reluctant to split up, which was also why I didn’t try Spatial Stepping past it. The only thing that seemed to work was walking back towards the desert, at which point the archway underwent its gradual solidification routine in reverse.
“Very well. So we seem to be faced with a maze if we wish to advance past this section. What does this change for us?”
In some ways, everything. If there was no steady source of food inside, then getting lost could actually be a death sentence for us. Or at least for me and Verin who actually needed food to survive. We’d been under the impression that no matter what we found here, we’d always be able to run back to the cabin if things dragged on for too long. Now, though, the stakes were higher.
At the same time…
“Nothing! Come on, we prepped for a long journey. Tess, you’re carrying months’ worth of food in there. Worst comes to worst, I’m pretty sure you could switch that moonshine spell of yours to conjure soup if you really needed to. We waited, like, half a year for this — stop being babies.”
Faced with such a comforting pep talk, we had little choice in the matter. All three of us ducked through the archway once more, ready to take on a labyrinth.
----------------------------------------
Complete darkness was inherently claustrophobic, in a way. No matter how much room there was around you, it pressed inwards, shrinking the world down to almost nothing. Given that I could see in the dark now, it was a sensation I hadn’t felt in a long time. As the perfectly dark walls of the maze fenced me in, however, I found myself recalling that feeling all at once.
Illumination. Despite being able to see the path forward just fine, the very first thing I did once inside was cast the familiar light cantrip. A small ball of radiance lit up above my head, lighting the way for the others.
Or, that was the plan, at least.
Without a single sound, a taffy-like tendril of darkness rocketed out from the labyrinth wall. Like a frog catching a fly, it latched on to the light source and pulled it in. Instantly submerged within the wall, our sole light source winked out.
In the wake of the act, the three of us were momentarily stunned into silence. Perhaps more used to such events from her time in Hexaura’s realm, Cal was the first to find her voice again.
“Not going to lie, that was a little creepy even for me. Really glad I did not cast a self-radiance spell. I’d rather not find out if the wall is strong enough to pull me in.”
Though half said in jest, Cal’s words brought an uncomfortable realization on. Would I be able to use any light magic here? I envisioned myself reflexively summoning my light armor to protect from a dark attack only to get swallowed. Not feeling any rush to tackle the maze, I figured some testing wouldn’t hurt.
“I would like to make a spear out of light,” I relayed. “But I also don’t want to die.” If I made a weapon from the light, I assumed the tendrils would grab it instead of my hands, which would let me test just how strong they were. At the same time, it wasn’t something I wanted to gamble on.
“I believe that is a reasonable risk given the circumstances. One moment.” Understanding my intent, Verin applied one of her new class skills to me. Clinging Permafrost formed a thin layer of frost over my feet, rooting me in place. As the skill came off cooldown, she continued to apply it, thick ice locking me in place even as I activated Heavy Step and Friction Feet. Hopefully immovable, I conjured a spear of light.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
THWAP. An inky appendage slammed into the tip of the spear, and I braced myself, ready to pit my Strength against the wall’s. The expected pull, however, never came.
“Neat. Gross,” Cal offered. On both counts, I had to agree.
Where the darkness met solid light, it began to bubble like hot tar, starting to drip down as it lost some of its cohesion. Experimentally, I added some extra mana with Overload Weapon, and the tendril recoiled. Overcome by its antithesis, the darkness began to dissolve, with the tendril quickly retreating into the wall as if to protect itself.
With proof of concept, I dismissed the spear and summoned a single gauntlet from my plate armor, flooding it with light mana. This time, the darkness wasn’t even able to make contact, coming to an abrupt stop a few centimeters away as if it had hit a wall.
Emboldened, I summoned my full set of armor, activating it with both light mana and, for good measure, fire mana as well. A few questing probes of darkness attempted to latch on to me, only to fail like their predecessors.
“Well, that’s reassuring, at least. You’ll forgive me if I don’t use any light magic while we’re here, though. Going to leave the role of ‘human lantern’ to you.”
A role I had no trouble taking on. Enhancing my armor with both light and fire mana at once was more costly, but still under what my Wisdom could handle, as long as I didn’t overload it. With my very presence dispelling the darkness about us, the three of us advanced.
----------------------------------------
“Left,” Verin intoned, holding our compass in one hand and a slab of wood in the other. Returning the compass to a pocket, she exchanged it for one of my battle kitchen knives I’d loaned her. With practiced precision, she carved into the wood, creating the start of a makeshift map.
I was vaguely aware there was a more methodical way to explore a maze, but for now, we were taking a simpler approach: As much as we could, we would keep going in our planned direction, backtracking only whenever we ran into a dead end. Already, we’d made three turns, with Verin marking the intersections and their possible directions on the wooden map.
If somewhat uneventful, the journey wasn’t entirely safe.
“Trip wire.” Activating Light Sight, I supplied it with some extra mana to turn on one of my lesser-used abilities. If not quite as exciting as laser eyes, light shot out from my head, a flashlight clearly illuminating the wire in question. Thankfully, it seemed the walls had given up on eating me, as the prospect of receiving one of those tendrils to the face was unappealing, to put it lightly.
For the first time in the dungeon, we were up against traps. Trip wires seemed to be particularly common, though we’d also passed a pit fall and pressure plate. In a sort of backwards way, they were actually easier for me to spot than usual, as the traps seemed to rely solely on the dark environment to hide themselves. With darkvision stripping that protection away, everything I’d found so far had been glaringly obvious.
Rather than comfort me, this only served to make me more nervous. Certainly this couldn’t be the only danger in this region, right? Were there even any monsters here?
Were it not for my Mental Resistance, I would have wondered if the dungeon had read my thoughts. Right as Verin was gingerly tiptoeing over the tripwire, they struck.
Two dozen tiny blurs shot out from the base of the walls, scurrying directly for our legs. Some sort of collective skill shrouded the area between them in darkness, and while I had no trouble picking out their furry forms, the others wouldn’t be as lucky.
I dashed forward, stabbing one with a spear even as I identified it.
Shrouded Packrat: Level 15, 0/50hp
With their incredibly low Constitutions, the rats were perfect targets for area attacks. Flooding my armor with as much fire mana as Overload Armor would allow, I shoved death mana into my feet. I watched as the closest rats dropped dead almost instantly, the acrid scent of burning, necrotizing flesh filling the narrow confines.
As fast as I’d been, however, it wasn’t enough. A few of the rats, either more savvy than their siblings or otherwise just luckier, skirted around my area of effect. With neither Cal nor Verin having Dexterity classes, they only had time to let out startled cries before black teeth bit into their ankles.
From there, everything went to shit.
Advancing Glacier. Even as she stumbled, Verin wasted no time activating her defensive skill. Her body froze into a statue as ice sprouted out from her, and with the awkward positioning, she startled to topple over.
The maze, eerily silent for so long, erupted into noise. Verin hit the ground hard with a crash and a thud, shards of ice chipping off of her. More concerning, however, was the loud SNAP as she pulled and then broke the tripwire below her.
As if eager to show off their traps to us, the walls changed shape, countless spikes of darkness pinching themselves off from the surface before hurtling through the air.
THUNK, THUNK, THUNK. Over and over, they hit their marks, turning Verin’s glacier into a pincushion. Caught on the outskirts of the effect, I was forced to weather a few of them as well. The spikes slammed into my fire armor, jarring me even if they failed to do much more than a smattering of magic damage.
The two of us were at least protected, though. While she was the furthest from the tripwire, Cal wasn’t entirely spared from the trap. With mounting horror, I spotted a single spike fly directly for her head.
Necrotic Step was quickly replaced by Light Step as I put every point of my Dexterity to work. Even then, I could tell it wouldn’t be enough. With my heightened thought speed, I was forced to watch as the spike came closer and closer to Cal’s temple.
In the end, it was a simple reflex that saved her. Registering my blazing form rushing to tackle her out of the way, Cal involuntarily leaned back. What would have previously been a direct hit turned into a grazing blow, the spike slicing a shallow furrow into her cheek and nose.
Even as she slashed down at the rat clinging to her leg, Cal brought a hand up to her face, wide eyes openly shocked as her fingers came away bloody.
With Cal no longer immediately in danger, I shoved all the panic I’d felt into my muscles, letting it fuel me as I cut a swath through the remaining rats. With the bulk of them already burnt, frozen, or necrotized, it barely took an instant to clean the rest of them up.
In the end, less than five seconds had passed since the first of the rats arrived. I surveyed the dozens of corpses at our feet, the spike-embedded ice sculpture on the ground, and the blood flowing from ankle and cheek alike.
One thought won out over all the others.
That went… poorly.
----------------------------------------
In the wake of our first battle — and after waiting out a particularly nasty blinding debuff from the rat bites — the three of us opted to take a break from our excursion. Retracting our steps, we escaped the labyrinth in short order. I’d half expected for the exit to be missing when we got there, but blissfully, that didn’t seem to be a trick the region would play on us.
On the entire trip back, all sorts of muttering filled the air. Cal, in particular, seemed to be miffed, bemoaning the loss of her Dexterity and Perception. For all that she’d gained with her new class, it was doubtful that she’d have been hurt with the reaction speed and danger sense from the old, and though we’d immediately healed her face, the psychological wound was still fresh.
Verin just had some choice words about the dungeon itself. Understandable, although I doubted the dungeon would care all that much.
Throughout it all, I remained silent, a nagging thought voicing itself over and over again in my head. As the two began earnestly discussing the fight and how to do better next time, I struggled to think of a way to bring my question up.
Deciding to rip the bandaid off all at once, I butted in before they could get too far on their strategizing session.
“This might sound rude,” I began. “But you two should sit this region out.”