THE STORY SO FAR

The young Engineer named Vonn is not the talented village boy he seems. Using his knowledge from his original life on Earth, he's spent over a year trying to be a brilliant inventor along with a good son and brother. In his travels he's discovered a fellow transplant from his homeworld, and a rumor that a third is being held captive in a dungeon. Not the nice sort of underground death maze he's used to, but one tainted by dark rituals. So now he has come to its doorstep, looking for proof of the crimes committed here... and for one more link to his past who might help him shape this world's future. His ruling Baron waits nearby with a small army for news of exactly what's down there.

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Vonn stood at the entrance to an unholy cavern with his tail bristling, his hands on an air rifle of his own design. Beside him a Kobold woman named Kura checked her knife collection. This evening's expedition was going to be short if at all possible. Followed by an enthusiastic jog past the airplane wreckage, through the magical alarm wards, and back to friendly territory.

Kura went first into the hillside tunnel. Her violet scales and black clothes and belts helped her be stealthy in the dark. She made no comment on how the entryway had changed from a simple mining passage with a holy symbol carved there, to a place of death. It wasn't just that they recognized the shapes of bones from at least three intelligent races, but that they were artfully arranged in some arcane pattern that gave off a scent of decay and a low thrumming like a heartbeat.

Vonn followed her, wishing he still had his enchanted night-vision goggles. The good news was that they needed only one little crystal as proof of what was happening here. Fixing it wasn't Vonn's job. Then again, neither was the scouting. He'd piloted his very experimental airplane here with the intention of dropping Kura off to play ninja, and flying away again.

The lizard-girl peeked around a corner and drew back, whispering. "Two skeletons. How noisy is that 'wind gun'?"

"It's not," he said. His nose caught the scent of dried blood.

She ushered him to take the first shot. Vonn crept forward. His knowledge of this dungeon was from its early days, outdated. The Y-shaped intersection ahead had enough space for two shambling skeletons of the Aves race, lightweight and thin. He crouched, took aim, and pulled the trigger. His gun loosed a burst of compressed air from a little crystal-based gadget, in a faint whoosh that drove a bullet into the shoulder of one target.

The bone-beast rattled and staggered, alerting the other. Vonn didn't have the power to sense the numbers for the exact damage he'd done. But the mystical System that governed reality here said it did 10 to 16 points of harm, an amount that couldn't kill someone like him in even three blows. The two monsters lurched toward him. Vonn backed off and pulled the lever that readied another bullet.

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Kura held him back and took out a small club for blunt work. When the first skeleton rounded the corner she crouched, leaned back on her muscled tail, and kicked. Her target crashed into the wall and its fellow beast. Bones clattered. Vonn found an opening and took a shot. Kura kept low and swept her club around to shatter one bony leg. She used her compact mass to knock her foes down and keep them vulnerable. Vonn stepped closer to try smashing something with the butt of his gun, but Kura had finished things before he could do more than distract one foe. It'd all taken just seconds of near-silent combat.

Vonn said, "Let me tap your weapon first, next time. Forgot to use my magic."

Kura nodded, and handed him an intact femur. "Improvised club."

Vonn felt queasy. "I don't know if this was dungeon-created, or --"

She grabbed an expendable throwing bone for herself. "We're professionals. Put your personal feelings aside; the righteous anger team is waiting for us to get back."

He nodded and tried not to care about how the pond ahead smelled of blood instead of water, now. The ruling Baron of this area had defiled the place. Dungeons fed on the blood, sweat and probably tears of explorers trying to plunder them, in a symbiotic relationship, but this one's keeper had gone out of his way to glut its appetite. Vonn pulled a small cluster of glowing crystals up from his belt lanyard and shined it ahead, down each of the two unexplored passages. "I fought tiny bird-like things here, last year."

"You said so, yeah. I'm prepared."

They skirted the pond and watched for trapped floors. Down one passage they found only another skeleton, easily dispatched, and a few empty rooms in nonsensical, jagged shapes. One of these held a handful of copper coins that Vonn grabbed, mainly to have an improvised distraction at the ready. The other path ended in a trio of wooden altars with identical old stains. Copies of something that the people shaping the dungeon had left in here, like props. Teaching it what to be.

About where Vonn remembered a trapdoor, they found a similar floor that was a grating. Dungeons needed an air passage between their entrance and their core. But he and Kura couldn't find any way to pry this metal plate open. He said, "Could there be a second path?"

They searched quietly in the dark. A heavy oak door had been set behind a curtain matching the red-brown walls. Vonn backed off in fright at first, having seen a hanging tapestry try to kill him once, but this one didn't react when they jabbed at it. Vonn pulled the curtain down and wished for a magical inventory. He looked to Kura to check the door.

She examined the wood and then took out a forked tool he'd never seen before, to wave it slowly over the handle. She hand-signaled, "Not really locked. Ready?"

Vonn touched the club the Kobold held, and willed a mote of magic into it. His clawed fingers chilled as the iron-shod wood glowed with white frost, ready to smite something for an extra 3-5 damage. He did the same to his gun and the metal grew cold.

Kura opened the door. The hinges creaked. She winced. Beyond it stood a staircase leading into the depths of what had been an iron mine. There'd been only two floors to this place last year but Vonn expected many more by now.

Descending was tedious. Vonn joined her in examining the stairs methodically for traps but found none. Not a theme of the place, apparently. Instead, they spotted an abomination of mismatched bones patrolling a hall and scuttling out of sight.