“Zereh!” Emrys crawled over to her. He had a healing spell ready and just enough mana to use it. It would wipe him out for the rest of the fight, but the witch was almost gone. Surely if he saved Zereh, she would be able to finish the battle from there.
Her eyes swirled the same red/green as the witch’s spell. “Poison,” she gasped. “Blood poison.”
The arcanist hesitated. His healing spell was mana-expensive because it was the only healing spell he knew, not because it was powerful. If he used it on Zereh and it wasn’t enough to counteract the blood poison, he would be dooming them both. Her health was draining dangerously fast, and he had to make a decision soon.
The warrior gasped. “Potion,” she coughed. “Green. Right pouch.”
Tied at her hip was a small bag. He tried to open it, but the strings wouldn’t budge. The arcanist swore. Immortals had bags of holding, which could hold far more than a normal bag of that size should be able to, in some cases even having an infinite amount of storage. The trouble was, such items were a gift from the gods. Mortals were not allowed to use them. Even in an instance such as this, where access to the bag would save the immortal’s life, he was unable to open it.
And they were out of time. Zereh sighed her last breath. Her entire body shuddered once, and she disintegrated into golden light.
“It’s just you and me now, my pet.” The witch cackled. She strode across the meadow, the fire storm inching towards her at the same speed as she walked away from it.
Emrys whirled around to face her. “You’re done for,” he growled. He poured all of his mana into a fire lance spell. The witch was stronger than him, and if he didn’t finish her off with this spell, she would kill him. “I’m going to stop you, and then I’m going to rip the heart out of this dungeon. Not only am I about to kill you, but I will prevent you from ever coming back.”
The witch froze. “You what? Why?”
The arcanist released his spell. The lance flew true, piercing the witch through the abdomen. The force of it pushed her back, far enough that the firestorm was able to retake its place above her. She screamed for one long second and at last fell lifeless to the ground.
Emrys slumped to his knees. Mana exhaustion threatened to overtake him, but that was one thing, at least, he had a cure for. He pulled a small vial of blue potion from his pocket and drank it in a single swallow. It wasn’t enough to restore his mana – only meditation could do that – but it would keep him on his feet until he had a chance to rest properly.
Bright white light flashed through the room. Two chests appeared before him, one gold and one bronze. He wearily touched both of them. Even though the bronze chest was clearly his, with Zereh dead he was allowed to open both. In the bronze chest was a necklace with a miniature potion vial hanging from a thin metal chain.
The arcanist wanted to laugh. He had been so concerned about giving up his loot, but his contribution had been so small that all he had won was a necklace that would slightly boost potion-making ability. Even trying to sell that artifact would be difficult.
He opened the golden chest next. The chest glowed from within as it opened, and he could have sworn he heard an angelic chord for a moment. At first glance, the box looked to be full of red fog. When he put his hands into it, it solidified in the same way as the witch’s green fog had solidified when she first appeared. He slowly pulled the fog from the chest, realizing as he did that Zereh’s prize was a dress. It was made of that same ethereal material as the witch’s gown, with the only difference being that hers was red.
Emrys could only shake his head. He couldn’t imagine the warrior in a gown, much less such a delicate one as that.
When he felt strong enough to stand, he made his way past the chests to the witch’s corpse. In death, she was cleared of all the damage he and Zereh had inflicted. Her dress was once again pure green, and the cuts on her body were nowhere to be found. She was shorter than he’d thought.
He sighed. Dungeon monsters were dungeon creations. The dungeon was able to pull inspiration from those that died within its walls, but ultimately the creatures were all puppets. It wouldn’t do any good to feel guilty about murdering the witch outside her own home. She had been a fiction of the dungeon, and her only priority had been killing them.
He just couldn’t stop thinking about the look in her eyes when he’d told her he was going to destroy the dungeon. In that moment, the facade of the evil witch had fallen away, and she had looked like a woman realizing her own mortality. How much of that was the dungeon, and how much was the witch’s personality?
He shook his head and pushed the thought away. It was too late to think like that; he had to finish what he’d come for, before the dungeon could throw anything else at him. Every moment that he spent there alone was a danger, but he couldn’t leave without the manaroot. Already he could feel the dungeon’s magic trying to push him out. Once the boss was defeated, a mass teleportation spell was activated throughout the last room to send adventures back to the entrance. It wasn’t hard to resist though, and Emrys wasn’t done.
The door of the hut swung open. Eerie, but it told him where he needed to go. He ducked inside and looked around.
His eyes were drawn to a spot of color. A coat rack stood by the door, a hat on every hook. There was a green bowler hat decorated by a bright yellow daffodil, a red ball cap, and a purple beanie that looked to have been hand-knitted.
The knot in the pit of his stomach tightened. That was… not at all what he had expected. It would make more sense to find jars of pickled animal hearts or a string of toenails. A witch’s house should be dark and creepy, full of disgusting knick-knacks that make your skin crawl.
Instead, a fire crackled merrily in the hearth. A small cauldron, the perfect miniature of the one outside, hung from a wooden arm that could be moved to guide the cauldron on or off the fire. It was half full of a bubbling brown liquid.
Emrys leaned forward out of morbid curiosity and took a sniff. He jerked back. It wasn’t some foul potion as he suspected, but rather a hearty soup. The broth had boiled too long and was thicker than the witch had likely intended, but it would clearly have been the woman’s dinner.
The arcanist moved the cauldron off the heat. His movements were wooden, his thoughts stalled. There was no sense in letting it char.
He stared into the soup for an interminable moment until a soft, inquisitive yowl jarred him back to his senses. His eyes jerked up. A black cat sat on the foot of what must have been the witch’s bed. It was little more than several blankets piled on top of wooden slats, but it looked comfortable enough. The pillow, at least, seemed to be good quality.
The cat stared at him with wide eyes that gleamed an otherworldly blue. Even the cat defied his presumptions; rather than stringy and hissing, the cat was round, well fed and fluffy. Its thick tail waved lazily from side to side.
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“Mrow?”
Emrys pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. “Focus. You came in here for a reason.” He eyed the cat. “You’re not going to fight me, are you?”
The cat lifted up a hind leg in a casual display of incredible flexibility and began licking its butthole.
“…right. In that case, I just need to find the dungeon core.” It couldn’t be that hard to find, he reasoned. The hut was the central part of the boss room, so it stood to reason that it would lead to the core. Not only would proximity to the core have strengthened the final boss, but there seemed to be an unwritten rule amongst dungeons that the core had to be hidden in plain sight. It wouldn’t be sporting for it to be tucked away under a random bush in the forest.
With that in mind, he flipped up the bed. Trap door under the bed would have been a classic option, so it was no real surprise to find unbroken wood flooring. It was never the first place he looked.
He tried again beneath the dining table. It was apparent from outside the hut that the only direction the dungeon core could be, was downward. If there had been another room, it would have been apparent during the fight, far too obvious.
But even when he traced his palm across the entirety of the floor, he could find no indication of a door.
“It must be something else,” he muttered.
The cat glanced up at him briefly, then resumed cleaning its paws.
“How can you be so calm? I would have thought you’d be more upset that your master is dead and her killer is rummaging through her things.” Blue eyes met his, until the arcanist shifted uncomfortably. “Right. Probably happens all the time.”
He scratched his head. If not a trap door, then what? He’d had to teleport once, but that had been a dungeon with clear space-bending themes. What had he run into in the hut that had looked significant?
The hats wouldn’t lead him anywhere. There wasn’t the slightest hint of a trap door. What else was there?
He took a deep breath, and the scent of overcooked soup tickled his nose. The soup!
The fire crackled merrily in the hearth, as it had the entire time he’d been in the hut. Despite the fact that he had done nothing whatsoever to tend the fire, it was the same height and temperature as when he had first arrived.
The fire mage held a palm out to the flame. He closed his eyes and inhaled, breathing in not just the smell of the soup but the fire itself. It didn’t smell of woodsmoke or charcoal. A slow smile spread across his face. The fire smelled of pure mana. It was the sort of trick that could keep a fire going at a perfect consistency indefinitely. The only requirement was a steady mana supply. Some mages used mana batteries, swapping them out as necessary. Others built their homes along a ley line, using a similar principle as flour mills by a river.
As for the witch, she had built her fireplace above the dungeon core.
Emrys pulled the fire into himself. He absorbed the mana until he was full to bursting and then pushed back. There was no way he could overload the circuits, not if it was being powered by the heart of the dungeon itself, but he didn’t have to. He just had to find the off switch.
His mana brushed against the inner walls of the fireplace like an invisible limb until he found the runes to control the fire. He sent out a pulse of mana, and the fire sputtered out in a moment.
The arcanist sighed. He would have given his left arm to bring the whole fireplace back to his mother’s house, but without Zereh’s bag of holding there was no way to make it happen. Even if he could carve out the stone inscribed with the control runes, he wouldn’t have the consistent power necessary to use it or a fireplace tough enough to withstand mana-flames.
With the firebox empty, he finally saw what he had been looking for. The hearth opened up into a stone chute that led, presumably, to the heart of the dungeon.
Emrys didn’t hesitate. He slipped his legs into the chute and pushed off from the hearth. He slid for only moments before tumbling into the dungeon core room.
He dusted himself off and surveyed the room. It was the same size and dimensions as the witch’s hut above, though it lacked the furnishings that made the upper level so inviting. The air was thick with mana in much the same way as the bog water had been. If he reached for it, he could feel the intention of the dungeon.
Damp stone walls made a small space feel even smaller, and the only source of light was from the pedestal at the center of the room.
Emrys closed in on it. Four blue flowers bloomed in a pile of green crystal shards. They were all different sizes. The largest was in the center, and the other three surrounded it. Each glowed with an internal light.
“Leave us,” the flowers whispered. “Begone from here.”
The arcanist gritted his teeth. White-hot rage filled him in a moment. “Who are you to tell me to leave,” he growled, “after inviting me so eagerly to stay.”
“Only a visit,” the flowers insisted. “You have defeated the trials. Rest now, brave warrior, and return when you are able.”
“How many have you killed? How many lives had to be sacrificed for you to grow this many?” Even in the smallest dungeons, men and women lost their lives chasing riches. For a dungeon to grow to four floors, it must have fed well for many years.
“Only the willing,” the dungeon hissed. “They come to me, as you did.”
“I came for one thing, and one thing only.” He pinched the stem of the first flower and tugged it free of the crystals. It had surprised him, the first time, how fragile the manaroot could be. The stems were thin. They snapped easily in a tight grip, and he had struggled more than once to dig the roots out of the sharp crystals that made up the flowerbed.
There was a technique to it, and for a time he had carried with him a special set of gloves. Eventually he had learned to coat his hand in mana, making the gloves functionally obsolete. The mana glove was soft enough not to bend or snap the flowers while still being firm enough to protect his skin from the jagged edges of the flowerbed crystals.
The dungeon shrieked at the loss of the flower. Emrys felt it in his bones, the harsh pressure of a dungeon in pain. It was the dungeon’s mana that permeated the room, and every inch of it pulsed with outrage.
“One of these days,” the dungeon hissed, “my brethren will destroy you. They will chew up your bones and spit out your likeness, and your body will be ripped apart by countless adventurers.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Emrys dug his fingers around the base of the second flower and gave it a tug. The dungeon shrieked once more, this time loud enough that Emrys caught the echo of its agony. He winced but did not falter. He carried a small case for the sole purpose of gathering manaroot flowers, and he placed the second flower gently inside. “But it won’t be today, and it won’t be you.”
For his first couple of dungeons, Emrys had tried ignoring their insults and venomous threats, but it didn’t make the process any easier. It was almost a distraction for them to banter, and if he took that away from them, the oppressive intent of the dungeon mana could be overpowering. They needed some form of relief as he carved away their life force, and it so happened that threats and verbal sparring were the least destructive option.
The concussive force that echoed through the dungeon after he uprooted the third flower, was the worst he had ever seen. Just like when the secret tunnel had begun to close behind him, the earth shook with a deep rumble that resonated throughout the entire system of caves.
“You murderous human,” the dungeon spat. “You think yourself so much better than me, but I fight those who are prepared and eager. I encourage and arm them as they test themselves against my challenges. But you come to me where I am weakest, where I am most vulnerable. And as you kill me, you think yourself noble.”
Emrys’s hand shook as he reached for the final flower. “I don’t answer to you,” he said. He grasped the last manaroot with too much strength, and it shattered in his hand. He let out a heavy breath, then dug through the crystals to pull the last shards away. Unlike the other flowers, there was no shriek of pain or cry of despair. There was only silence, the complete and total silence of a dead room.
The arcanist was trembling. There was a part of him, a small part of him, that couldn’t help but wonder if the dungeon was right. There was only one way to kill a dungeon, and this was it. And it was true that not everyone who entered a dungeon would perish. Often adventures would reach the final boss and emerge victorious. They would leave the dungeon to fight another day.
But in his very first dungeon, where he had first learned magic, he had nearly lost his mentor to an ice bear. He had had nightmares for months after, of Elder Winter lying motionless on the floor beside the corpse of the ice dungeon boss. Even still, the nightmares returned on occasion.
It wasn’t that the dungeons were malicious. If anything, they were admittedly generous in how they treated their prey. But as long as they were lying in wait, they would draw people in. And the vast majority of them would be unprepared, ignorantly walking into their deaths.
The arcanist closed his eyes and stopped resisting the teleportation spell. White light flashed around him and when it dispersed he opened his eyes to find himself outside of a perfectly normal looking cave. Gone were the thick stalks of heather and cat-tails. When he looked in, he no longer saw the deep pools littered with the bones of adventures. Even the mud and gunk that had seeped into his clothes had vanished without a trace.
The dungeon was gone.