“Isn’t this the boss room? Where is it?” Jefferson asked. The rogue’s daggers glinted slightly in the eerie light of the dungeon.

The final room of the third floor was an open meadow. Thigh high stalks of heather painted thick purple lines across the grass, swaying gently despite the lack of wind.

“Could be hiding in the grass?” Merv hung back, as close to the door as possible.

Emrys kept his expression neutral. The healer’s timidity rankled, but it wouldn’t do any good to make an issue if it. He flickered a fireball on and off in his hand, a fidget technique he’d picked up in a previous dungeon.

“Hard to say,” said Jefferson. “I’ll scope the area. See if maybe we have to flush it out.”

“Watch your step.” Merv glared distrustfully at the meadow. The whole dungeon up to that point had had a bog theme, like it was a combination of water and earth rather than just one element. More than once, they’d stepped on what looked like solid ground and found themselves waist deep in murky water.

“Of course. Emrys, keep an eye out.” The rogue shimmered once and vanished.

Not for the first time, Emrys envied the rogue’s disappearing act. If he applied himself to stealth magic, he could likely achieve a similar effect. In fact, when he had chosen the Arcanist class, Elder Winter had advised him to take advantage of the flexibility the class provided. Emrys was capable of using not just fire mana, but any type of mana. Aside from one healing spell though, he hadn’t followed that advice.

The fireball continued to flicker in his grip. The trouble with other mana types was that even if he could technically make use of them, the spells didn’t come as easily as fire did. He wouldn’t be able to start with a stealthy invisibility spell, he would have to start with a basic shadow spell and work his way up, in other words putting lots of arduous work on interim spells that he didn’t care about.

“Should we go after him, do you think?” Merv whispered. “Jefferson’s taking a while.”

Emrys frowned. The healer was right. Jefferson was light on his feet and should have made quick work of a room of this size.

“Give him another minute,” Emrys answered, his voice low. “If he found the boss, he might be setting up a sneak attack.” Jefferson had used that strategy on the previous floors, and Emrys had to admit it was incredibly effective. The ability to knock out a quarter of the boss’s health with the first blow was a game changer in these fights.

A loud smack echoed through the chamber and was quickly followed by a heavy splash. Before Emrys or Merv could react, Jefferson appeared beside them, his clothes dripping and muddy.

“It’s like a Venus flytrap. It started small, but it’s growing.” He spoke quickly, using the clipped tone of someone trying to impart a lot of information in a short amount of time. “I cut off two of the heads, but it’s a whole cluster. Emrys, you should be able to do some serious damage with fireballs. Focus on one head at a time. Merv, hang back as best you can. When you’re out of ranged healing spells, come closer but watch your step. There aren’t any obvious splash zones, but the whole meadow feels like a water bed. And if you hit the ground hard enough, it doesn’t take much to punch through to the water.”

Emrys followed Jefferson through the thick stalks of heather. The ground beneath his feet gave way under the weight of him and sprung back into place when he moved, the effect becoming more pronounced with every step closer to the middle of the room. It was unsettling, to say the least, but they would have to make do.

At first glance, the boss looked like a pile of smooth, oval leaves. Just as Jefferson had reported, the pile was swelling, growing rapidly in size.

Emrys gathered his fire mana and concentrated it into a thin beam of superheated flame, immediately scoring a direct hit on one of the pods. Instead of catching fire, it popped open like a mouth. The underside of the leaves were a soft pink, and there were green tines along one edge like teeth. Now that he knew what to look for, Emrys could see that each pod seemed to be hinged where it met the stem, and the outer edge was gated by the teeth. The stems of each pod were growing from the same central stalk.

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Jefferson threw a dagger with pinpoint accuracy into the pink maw of the open pod. The creature shuddered. The wounded pod shriveled until it was a dried brown husk, and fell to the ground.

The creature swelled again, until each pod was the size of a man’s head.

Emrys frowned. The beast was unsettling, for sure, but so far it hadn’t done anything particularly dangerous. It was just sitting there, rooted to one spot, letting them attack it. Something…wasn’t right.

“Hit it again with your fire!” Jefferson called.

Despite his misgivings, Emrys complied. Another beam of superheated flame shot out and made direct contact with a pod. Again the mouth opened, but this time it wasn’t empty. The pink was dotted with black flies, and as soon as the way was clear, the swarm flew at Emrys with a vengeance.

“Aw, what the heck?” Jefferson complained. He threw shurikens at the open pod until it shriveled. If each pod was actually full of flies, they would have to change their strategy.

Emrys canceled his superheating spell in favor of a less focused flamethrower cantrip. The flies were small enough that they dropped off fairly quickly, but as before with the loss of a pod, the boss doubled in size.

“We have to knock them out all at once,” Emrys shouted, “or the bugs will be too large to manage.”

“If we do that, we will be overwhelmed by the swarm. Keep going one at a time.”

Emrys gritted his teeth but did as instructed. Jefferson was the party leader, and the middle of a fight was not the right time to argue. The next pod burst open, letting loose a torrent of mosquitos. Each was as large as his fist with a wicked needle-sized nose. He changed his spell to the more general flamethrower. Already he could see that they were taking longer to kill than the previous wave.

This time, he didn’t wait for the boss to finish growing before he started on the next pod. Fire lanced out at the creature, burning a black hole into its side until a swarm of dragonflies emerged. They were glittering blues and greens, beautiful in any other context. He showered them in fire.

Several dragonflies burst through the curtain of fire, teeth gnashing. Their gossamer wings were dotted with flames, but the damage hardly slowed them down. They flew in jagged, darting motions. Emrys jerked back, but he was too slow to avoid the oversized insects, and they latched onto his limbs. They tore chunks out of his robes and then his skin, with their vicious teeth.

Emrys yelped. Each bite of the dragonflies was a hot lance of pain. He circulated mana throughout his entire body, enduring the damage until he could unleash his most powerful spell. Fire exploded out from around his body, a whoosh of armor that started at his skin and extended just past his robes. The dragonflies shrieked and burnt to ash.

Emrys canceled the spell and fell to his knees. “Heal!” He called.

Merv lobbed a ranged heal spell, and Emrys instantly felt the golden magic close his wounds. There was nothing to be done about his robe until he got back to town, but that was worth waiting for.

“We’re doing great,” Jefferson crowed. “This thing is nearly at half health and we’ve barely taken any damage.”

“Speak for yourself,” grumbled Emrys. He lanced a bolt of fire at the boss. By this point, the pods were each as large as a mattress. If they kept growing like this, the insects that emerged would be too large to handle.

His aim slipped. The stream of fire seared across the three remaining stalks. They popped open one after another, each releasing a swarm of insects.

“You idiot!” Jefferson screamed. “One at a time!” But it was too late. The rogue darted through the swarms, slashing wildly with his daggers. He was able to kill insects with every slice, but there were so many.

Emrys turned up the flamethrower spell and poured all of his mana into it. The cone of fire blasted against the flies, dragonflies, and mosquitos but it wasn’t enough to kill the empowered creatures. They darted through the flames and emerged unscathed.

Emrys backed away quickly. The ground bucked and swayed beneath his feet, but he kept his balance.

Balls of golden magic lobbed through the air as Merv continuously healed Jefferson. The rogue was taking heavy damage in the center of the swarm as he hacked at the pods. After releasing the swarm they had begun to close, and the rogue feared that if they did, it would mean a second wave of insects.

Emrys kept the continuous stream of fire going in as wide an arc as he could maintain. He couldn’t back too far away from the boss without losing contact, so he was walking backwards in a circle around the creature.

Which is why he didn’t notice until it was too late, that a singed pod was swinging towards him. It struck him in the side, sending him tumbling to the ground. The weight of his fall punched through the thin layer of dirt and grass. In seconds he was submerged in muddy water.