This was not quite what I had expected. I’d figured that the dungeon makeup would have changed, but to have a full open area like this? How was there a sky, a sun? Clouds?!

Everyone had exited the hall and had taken up positions to look around. The exit looked to be centered on a rock wall that reached up into the cloud layer. I followed the layer, seeing that it kept going unbroken out of eyesite to either side of the exit.

“Sage, is this what you were thinking was going to happen?” Dengin asked.

I shook my head, still somewhat stunned. “This was a possibility, but… Not like this?”

Dengin and Talok stepped over to me, my group instinctively crowding near to hear the conversation. “Go on then, what do you think we’re looking at here?”

“Ah… Like I told the Guild Master, Lorekeeper and Baron… I expected an underground chamber, something large. Maybe with branching tunnels to different areas,” I started, my eyes on the ground as I tried to collect my thoughts. “I figured we’d come out into a camp or something, with the Elves here.”

A few members of the other two parties had stepped away together and were huddling together talking. Fingers pointed, heads nodded and words were mumbled. “Ian, this then could be the same, yes? Just not on the kind of scale you were thinking?” one of them asked, the woman that had spoken chidingly to Dengin earlier.

I nodded slowly, turning around to look out at the trees and the walls of the chamber. “Yes, I just didn’t think that it would be possible to… I mean look at this! There’s a sky up there, how is that possible?”

“Dengin, I’m going to borrow this scout, we’ll take a look around a short ways, then come back,” a bearded man in leathers said, pulling Kendra along with him. As they moved away, he pointed down the road and started speaking to her. They’d moved too far for me to hear, but I could guess what she was being instructed to do.

“Not too long, Argeth, and try to keep in pairs. Don’t need any monsters taking anyone down.”

The man, Argeth, gave a wave, and then he and Kendra were off at a jog a bit away from the path. I watched for a moment, then turned to see another pair going off in the opposite direction. “They’ll go out a ways, then make their way to the north there,” Dengin explained, pointing out in front of us. “Should give us a starting point, at the very least tell us how big this place might be.”

I nodded, thinking a bit before looking back to the sky. “Could that be an illusion? Is there magic like that?”

One of the robed women responded to my question, her voice pitched to be heard. “Possible, and yes. There is illusion magic, though none of us have seen anything on this kind of scale. You think that’s what this all is? The sky, trees… all of it?”

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Shaking my head, I stepped in the direction of the trees. “No, I think this is what would have been called ‘open zone’, back home. Somewhere out there, probably down that path,” I turned and pointed the way Kendra and Argeth had gone. “The Elves are probably down that way. A camp, outpost… something.”

The woman and her colleagues walked to me, Dengin and Talok with them. “Open zone?”

I had a small grin on my face, as I looked at them. “If that’s what this is, adventurer’s are going to love it. After they get used to it.” I waved my hand to the west, which the path went down. “Elven camp or outpost, down there.” My hand swung a bit more to the north, not quite reaching the treeline. “Monsters coming from the trees there, and deeper in maybe some ruins or something.”

My hand kept moving, following the trees to the east. “More ruins, maybe a monster lair in there. Finally, some caves in the walls before we get back to the entrance here.”

I paused, looking at them as they imagined it all themselves. “And all that, while a dozen or so groups are in here.”

That brought them all up short, looking at me like I’d just said cats wouldn’t knock a glass off the table. “Multiple groups on the same floor? That’s dangerous, you could accidently run into another group while they’re fighting, and both get killed…” the woman said with a shake of her head. “Not something the Guild allows, young Sage.”

“Ah, but what if this is the totality of the floors the dungeon had?”

We all turned to the new voice, a bright light in a darkening room, to my mind. Orthan had joined us, but his eyes were on the trees. “If Ian is right, and this is some kind of open area, zone… It’d be like a break, wouldn’t it? As far as what the Guild would have us do? Groups going off and taking down monsters as we find them?”

The older adventures looked thoughtful, eyes on each other as they contemplated the repercussions of that possibility. I was just glad there was something to compare what I was thinking this would turn out to be. “The biggest thing I haven’t figured out though is, how would monster respawning happen?” I asked, looking to the experts. “Can the population of monsters be renewed while we’re inside? If it can, then yeah… I’m going to bet on this being an ‘open zone’, and multiple groups able to be in here at varying times of day.”

“Old knowledge, being what we thought a few days ago before you arrived, is that no. A dungeon can’t refresh its monsters while a group is on the floor.”

Whatever else might have been said, was cut short as the group that had gone to the east returned. “Hot springs, with some giant lizard things all around it,” one of them said. “Different colored scales, different sizes. Big as dogs, and some nearly as big as a horse.”

The older groups gathered around to listen as the two scouts reported what they’d seen. Orthan looked at me as Delava stepped over to us. “Are you sure about all of this, Ian?”

“As sure as I can be. I didn’t even know anything like this existed four days ago,” I said. “It’s been a long time since I was even involved with where all this stuff is probably being pulled from in my memories.”

The three of us continued talking, each of them asking questions and trying to pull more from what I could remember. It wasn’t a lot, there were small details we discovered, but still too much of what I remembered was fractured.

“We found them! We found the Elven town!”