Chapter 32: All About Dungeons, Delving, and Dragons

Sakura, Landar

Sakura

I led my team down a long corridor following Edna. The large double doors had slammed shut behind us as soon as we were through and our footfalls reverberated back at us echoing strangely off the hard stone.

“You’re now in the dungeon, dears. However, I've taken this entire section as my personal laboratory and study. The ambient mana in a dungeon is extremely helpful to several of my experiments. But none of you are interested in that. At least, not yet. So . . .” she trailed off as we came to a large metal door. The air tingled as mana swirled in the chamber before the door, and I realized the mana felt wild, almost primal. It made the hair on my skin stand on end, and I had to force my breathing to even out and my heart rate to calm.

“Raw mana, unrefined, full spectrum. It's a heady thing,” she cackled evily, sending shivers down my spine. I saw by the expressions on their faces that my team felt the same about the woman. She was unnerving.

If power can corrupt a person's mind, I think it's touched hers. At least a bit. I thought as she moved closer to the door and began manipulating the mana around her.

I, Sky, am disturbed by this one. She feels like an addled mongoose. Deadly, and unpredictable. Yet she has acted normal, as far as humans can ever be normal.

Yeah, she’s weird. But she’s not done anything wrong by us, King interjected. And as usual, I found wisdom in both of my spirit beast companions' opinions. At least of a kind.

The doors swung open and on the other side was nothing but an empty hallway, filled with pitch black. “There are three rooms you’ll need to conquer before you’ll be finished. Now, in you go children. I’ll be watching, and waiting. Don’t take too long. Others are waiting for their turn after all.”

We moved into the darkness and found that it dissipated as we moved through it, past the open doors and into the preternatural gloom.

“Visibility is limited to twenty, maybe twenty five feet,” Regi said as he drew his sword. Medgi cast a light spell from his staff and a soft warm yellow glow illuminated the area around us.

The doors behind us shut firmly with a loud thud, and suddenly the only light was that from Modgi’s staff. I pulled my daggers from inside my armory, and as quickly as I sent the mental command they filled my palms with cold hardened steel.

“It's not so bad,” Victor said cheerfully, before casting a spell, and a small ball of fire lifted from his palm and floated above his head as if it were a hat.

You have observed the use of the spell Torch Light. This is a tier 1 fire spell typically used to produce natural illumination within a 15 foot radius.

“Torch light. Useful spell. One of the few I learned before coming to the university.” Victor explained, and I blinked the notification away. I had grown used to the mind spirit in my head helping me identify new things in this western world. But sometimes it was overly redundant.

Tedgy bowed her head in acknowledgement. “It is useful. A second source of light will help us.”

Medgi looked interested but before he could ask the other mage about the spell, Regi shushed us all. “I hear something,” he whispered. “Metal, or bone on stone. Moving quickly.”

I listened intently, breathing in steadily and quietly as I could. After a few moments, I heard something. The scraping of something sharp on something hard. It sounded far away, like an echo.

“Kobolds is my guess,” I said. The little demons were the least of the draconic races, and enjoyed their clever torments on the living. “Three rooms. Let's conquer them and move quickly.”

Regi nodded, and he and Victor took up the front, while I took up the rear. I was close combat capable, and so would help prevent our group from getting flanked, while our main two melee oriented people would take the front.

We moved smoothly down the corridor checking in small rooms that seemed to appear randomly to each side. They were empty, or filled with refuse and were little more than closet or storage room sized.

“I doubt these are the rooms she was talking about, “I said as we came up to the third such refuse room. It was filled with broken crates of half rotten wood, and stone and dust that had fallen from the ceiling.

“Agreed.” Megi’s voice echoed slightly, despite him whispering. He winced as it continued to echo, and eventually came back to us. A silence fell over us and I held my breath, and felt the hairs on my neck stand on end not for the first time.

The scratching began only a heartbeat later as a low and distant scraping noise. It quickly grew until it surrounded us in an almost cacophonous ringing of angry metal on stone, and chattering teeth.

“Damn it, we have to move!” I said, and pushed my team forward. Thankfully Regi took my meaning and moved quickly, and the rest of us followed close behind.

Victor was breathing hard as we came to a long corridor that ran left and right of us, and in front of us we found a massive single door. “This is the entrance into the first room I think,” I said as I ran my hand over the hardwood looking for a handle or some kind of opening mechanism.

“How do we open it?” Tedgy asked as she knocked an arrow that glowed slightly in the darkness giving off a red angry light. Her eyes darted back and forth up and down the hallway, looking for where the enemy was coming from.

“Let me try something,” Victor said through his hard breathing as he lifted his hands to the wood, infused with a type of mana, and pushed his will into it. His eyes closed. “That’s what I thought. Enchanted mana circuit. Simple, just need to feed it . . .”

The door glowed a bright neon red, and pulses of the color ran down both corridors. Illuminating a mass of red scaled, and white teethed humanoids half our size. Whose teeth dripped with saliva and expression carried nothing but pure hunger.

“Kobols!” Tedgy let loose her arrow down the left path, and it exploded into two dozen much smaller pieces of deadly shrapnel. The first rank of the Kobolds fell twitching to the attack, dead or dying it didn’t matter as the next half a dozen in the rank behind them charged forward. Trampling their erstwhile comrades.

Daggers are a bad idea, I thought and switched to bow. Half a heartbeat later my hands filled with the bow I had been practicing with for weeks now. With a flex of my mana through my connection with King, I generated an arrow of wood, and infused it with a simple spell.

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I brought the arrow to my cheek as another pulse ran down the corridors illuminating the ranks of kobolds from the right path. They were already charging.

Perfect.

I loosed the arrow and it whirled through the air creating a satisfying whistling sound that seemed to only aggravate the ravenous little monsters.

When the arrow slammed into the stone a few inches in front of the swift moving horde and shattered, Regi winced. “Bad shot. Try again.”

“Watch.” I said, with a grin as the spell slowly spun to life.

The first rank of enemies got past the slow activating spell, and met Regi’s sword. Their claws I was sure could have done damage had they landed. But despite their incredible speed compared to a normal human, Regi was an advanced cultivator. His speed was super human, and he cut them down with an ease that was as impressive as it was disconcerting, as trails of darkness followed him even in the middle of the fire light.

There was no time to reflect on the oddity, as my spell activated.

Vines as thick as my arm erupted from the stone, thorns as long as daggers coating every inch of them as they wrapped the enemies in crushing grips, and tore flesh from bone. The vines kept moving, grinding against one another. In seconds the horde of what must have been fifty or so devilish draconic kobolds had been turned into a fine red paste that coated the still writhing mass of vines.

“Terrifying.” Regi said, and I couldn’t help but smile as I called another arrow and turned back down the left hall.

Tedgi had already unleashed another arrow, and the second rank had been felled. Medgi finished casting the spell he had been calling and ice shards the size of daggers swirled around him in a threatening display, before suddenly going still, and then launching at speed at the ranks of oncoming enemies.

The effect was spectacular.

Each of the dozens of ice crystals pierced one of the red scaled kobolds through the chest, then once on the other side exploded into shrapnel peppering the next line with a deadly shotgun-like effect.

When it was done only three kobolds remained. They broke and ran. Only to die to Tedgi’s next arrow.

“Well. That was fun!” Tedgi said, her voice like a sundrop in the gloom.

“Indeed. I did not think I was . . . as powerful as I am.” Megi said, in awe of his own spell. He looked down at his hands, then at the devastation he had wrought.

“Got the door,” Victor backed away and we all turned as the door began to slowly open. “What do you think is on the other side?”

“Don’t know,” Regi shrugged as he cleaned his blade on a small cloth he carried for the purpose. “But my guess is the first room.”

Victor rolled his eyes. “Well duh, but what do you think is going to be in the first room?”

“More kobolds.” I said, as the gloom beyond the door began to dissipate. I knocked an arrow, as the sound of scraping claws hit my ears.

“Probably, but I mean in a more academic sense. Danger? Adventure? More enemies just like those?”

“Kobolds,” Tedgi added, trying to get Victor refocused.

“Yes. Of course there will be more . . .” A trio of sharp darts dinged off his lazily raised shield. “Oh, Kobolds. Right!” He raised his weapon, and stepped up next to Regi, ready to hold the line while the rest of us dealt with the onrushing horde barely illuminated by the firelight coming off the floating fire above his head.

***

Landar

The first room hadn’t been much of a challenge. Just more kobolds, though the room had a ‘throne room’ motief it was being lived in by the un-intelligent creatures as a simple place to pitch their tents.

The three dozen kobolds were brutally slaughtered by the terrifying monsters that Tosh summoned. The few that got through, Gragon and myself handled with ease. I almost felt bad splitting their skulls, as they gave little resistance. Even compared to the city watch guards I had sparred with several times under my fathers command.

But it was unavoidable.

Roland grappled one of the smaller specimens that had tried to ambush us early on and speak with it. But the creature didn’t speak any of the half a dozen languages I found out that Roland knew.

“I’m speaking the regional Kobold dialect, but he’s not responding.” Roland had said, disappointed by the lack of conversation with the little guy. He had hoped we’d be able to pass without bloodshed.

I guess it's a good thing for a cleric to want to avoid, right? I thought as I cleaned my ax and examined the empty throne in the first room. Waiting for the other members of my party to finish cleaning up their own equipment so we could move on. Just hope it doesn’t go too far, and get someone hurt. Then again, he did snap that thing's neck like it was a toothpick after he determined he couldn’t communicate with it. So I doubt he’d hesitate when the chips were down.

There was nothing to be found in the first room of value, so we continued on. The second room was much more interesting however.

“These look like dwarven ruins,” Gragon said. “Like the abandoned holdfasts deep in the earth, near the lava vents. Incredible.”

The room we found ourselves walking into directly after the throne room, was a long and tall room with a vaulted ceiling. Small sconces with lit oil lamps illuminated the entire place, casting odd shadows in strange directions.

“What would this room have been in those old ruins, Gragon?” Roland asked, as curious as I was.

“Probably the vault room. Or the lesser treasury. Where gifts of state would be protected and put on display, and if the clan held to the old traditions, a book of remembrance would be placed on a central pedestal, right there.” he pointed to a spot in the center of the long corridor as we passed it. There was little remarkable about it, other than a small discoloration of the stone to mark the center of the room.

“You mean a book of grudges?” Tosh asked.

“Nah boy. That's only the northern clans. They hold grudges like my da did coin. As tight as they could, and they’d as soon die then let go. But most of my kin, my clan included, like to keep remembrances of both the good deeds of others, and the scoundrels who wronged us. So it's a book of remembrance, that’s the old way.”

We came to a small crossroads, where another pathway cut through going perpendicular to the central path, cutting right through where if the pattern had held, another set of massively tall pillars would be holding the ceiling up.

“Ah, here’s where the treasurer and the auditors offices would be held. Down that way, and that way.” He pointed down the left and right pathways respectively.

“So it must be odd that there’s nothing here then?” I asked, as I stared down the pathways in both directions. They led to stone doors that were clearly firmly shut.

“Aye, in a real dwarf hold it would be. But here’s a dungeon. One of the Genus Loci. The old witch called it by its real name. They copy what they’ve seen, but unless they’re very old, or started their souls life off as a sentient species which is even rarer then finding a normal one, they’d have little context for what the rooms are meant to be used for.”

Curious, I stepped off the path for a moment heading down towards where Gragon had pointed out the Auditor's office. As I took my third step, a stone under my foot depressed, and I felt the world shift under me.

“Fool boy!” Gargon shouted and I felt a powerful hand grab ahold of my shirt and yank be backwards and off my feet, as spikes erupted from the depressed stone directly up at where I had just been.

I found myself at Gragon’s feet, my backside bruised, but otherwise fine as I watched the sharpened spikes slowly retreat back into the stone.

“Didn’t you see the trip wires and traps off the path?” He demanded, and all I could do was blink in horror as the spikes fully retracted.

Tosh cleared his throat and spoke with an uneasy voice. “I did not . . . that . . . that is terrifying. Is this entire place boobytrapped?”

Roland reached down and pulled me back to my feet. “Best we stick to the path.”

“Your brother in law speaks sense,” Gragon gently, well as gently as a dwarf smith turned caravan guard could, pushed me towards the far exit. “There might be riches off the beaten path, or mysteries to find. But this room is deadly if we stray.”

I was pretty sure I was returning to my normal color by the time we safely reached the far door.

“Alright,” I said as Tosh poured mana into the door and it started moving on its own. “Last room. What do you think is going to be in there? Any takers?”

“Something dangerous,”Gragon spat on the ground.

“More Kobolds maybe,” Tosh said as he brushed off the dust from his hands.

“I'm with the Tosh on this one. Definitely more Kobolds.” The doors eaked open and Roland was the first through the unnatural darkness, and into the next room.