A cold breeze drifted across my face, making me pull the blanket over my head. The smell of burning wood wafted over to me followed by something salty and delicious. I sat up quickly remembering what happened before I passed out and hit my head on something hard.
“Ow!” I heard someone say as the same time as me.
I rubbed the top of my head and looked up to see the swordsman rubbing his chin with a grin.
“Are you alright?” He asked.
I looked around to see where I am, bundled up in a blanket cradled on top of the swordsman’s crossed legs with another set of blankets around his shoulders and me. We sat right beside a fire that tried its best to warm us in the still rainy forest. A metal contraption was set up above the fire which allowed a small cooking pot to hang on to it as the swordsman mixed it with a wooden spoon. To our right, the female mage slept with her eyes closed.
“I-,” my voice came out hoarse as I tried to speak, coughing to clear my throat. The swordsman rummaged around behind him and fished out a waterskin to uncork and gave it to me. I drank greedily with large gulps, spilling almost half of it down my chin.
“Slow down,” the swordsman said. “Don’t want you to choke after all that trouble of saving you.”
He joked with me and the light from the fire allowed me to see his face clearer. He had a scar that went diagonally from the top right of his bridge nose and to just under his left eye. He raised his thick eyebrows at me in a questioning manner as he observed me with mischievous hazel eyes.
A loud growl could be heard and I was startled, looking to see if another deer or some other monster appeared. The swordsman chuckled which made the mage stir in her sleep, grumbling something softly.
“It’s your stomach kid,” his voice was deep but light with humour as he poked me in the stomach. “Come on, have some soup.”
He fished out some bowls from a rucksack and poured a creamy coloured soup into them before giving one to me with a spoon. I mumble a small thank you before putting a spoonful in my mouth. It was watery, barely any substance with a slightly salty but overall bland taste. The few small chunks that were in it seemed to be some kind of meat that became mush from any slight force. It was the best food I’ve ever tasted and ate it all, ignoring its scalding hot temperature.
The swordsman held out his hand to me, asking for the bowl and I gladly gave it back for him to give me seconds. This time, I blew on the food and ate slowly as the swordsman made sure I was fine before he ate his own bowl.
“Thanks for the save back there,” he said, licking the back of his wooden spoon. “If it weren’t for you, Mira and I might have died.”
I glanced at the mage, the few strands of her hair that spilled out of her hood shone as the fire danced.
“I… didn’t do much,” I said, looking down at my bowl.
“That’s not true,” the swordsman smiled. “You stopped that ferthur just long enough for me to kick it away, and even pulled the biggest one away from us. Mira was pretty much out of mana, and I can’t take on three of them at once.”
“Ferthur?” I asked, tilting my head up at him.
“Those monsters that looks like deer,” he explained. “They’re the most common monster that you encounter here in the Grey Deluge.”
He stretched out his arms and gestured to our surroundings at that.
“My name’s Conroy,” the swordsman said, putting down his half-eaten bowl. “What about you kid? How did you get here?”
I opened my mouth to speak, taking a breath in and frowned. That’s right, I had forgotten my name. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t really remember anything before waking up today.”
Conroy’s face showed surprise at that. “Hmm.”
“What is this place?” I asked Conroy.
“This…” he began, “is a dungeon.”
His words echoed in my head as I shut my eyes in pain, sudden vague and blurry visions of a child that I think was laughing flooded my brain. I dropped the bowl as I clutched my head, crying out in pain. Both my and Conroy’s voice sounded like I was hearing it underwater.
“Take… breathe… kid…”
I could feel Conroy pull me into a hug trying to assure me, and just as suddenly as it appeared, the pain and visions were gone. I opened my eyes again and looked around. The white noise of the rain became more pronounced as I stared at the shadows that jumped up and down across the gnarled trees.
“That’s it,” Conroy said slowly. “Deep breaths, you’re fine. Don’t worry. I’m here.”
A good minute passed before I could calm down as Conroy swayed us back and forth.
“You can go to sleep kid, its fine. Just rest.”
I was so tired and I wanted to, but try as I might my mind won’t rest. I turned to sit up properly again, Conroy give me the room to move. I moved out of the makeshift nest and sat to his right, facing the fire. I settled on to the relatively dry bedroll as Conroy picked up his bowl again, watching me.
“Can you tell me more about the dungeon?”
Conroy nodded and finished up his soup before speaking.
“If you really don’t remember anything, then I’ll try to explain things properly. We’re in one of the ancient dungeons created in the Thieves’ Reign. Do you remember anything like that?”
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I furrowed my eyebrows. “I think… I remember playing pretend. Being an adventurer.”
“It’s a common dream that young boys have,” Conroy smiled. “Even I did the same when I was your age. Dungeons are amazingly horrifying things, that tempts every adventurer wherever they are. They say that whatever you desire will be granted if you conquer one, but that’s quite the difficult feat.”
He reached for a stick and stoked the fire in front of us, tossing embers around, a few escaping only to be extinguished by the wet ground.
“Many of the dungeons are easily found and welcomes anyone inside. To tempt them, the dungeon creates treasures that will lure humans in and then create monsters to defend against and kill adventurers. Not sure how a dungeon plans things like that though.”
“Because the dungeon itself is living and thinking.” A female voice explains as Conroy and I look at Mira, awake.
She sat up and yawned while rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “How long was I passed out?” she asked.
“Not long,” Conroy answered. “Maybe an hour. The kid here woke up just a few minutes before you did.”
Mira studied me with her eyes, a beautiful dark purple that seemed to put me in a trance. She had a round face, sharp nose, and a lightly tanned skin. To me, she looked around the same age as Conroy, maybe even younger, but the way she talked made me think she was older than him. Conroy pushed a bowl of the soup past my face, handing it off to Mira who mumbled in thanks, taking small sips from the spoon.
“If Conroy hasn’t said it yet, thank you.” Mira said after a few sips.
“Hey come on, what do you take me for?”
“A musclehead.”
Conroy chuckled. “Well I did thank him, you know?”
Mira narrowed her eyes but turned back to me anyways. “Even so, if you hadn’t been there I would most likely mana for the dungeon right now.”
“No, I didn’t do much…” I mumbled once again.
Mira nodded, still showing a calm but grateful face. “So how did a young boy like you stumble into a dungeon, much less the Grey Deluge?”
“I don’t know…” I answered. “I told Conroy that I can’t remember anything. Just woke up here today and walked around looking for anyone.”
Mira and Conroy looked at each other, a conversation seemed to pass between the two before Mira’s eyes met mine again. “Come here,” Mira ordered, her commanding voice made me worried but a gentle pat from Conroy convinced me to walk towards her.
Again, she studied me with intense curiosity and grabbed my arms. Cuts and scabs revealed themselves as he turned my hands over, then placed my hands in one of hers and lifted my tunic up. I tried to cover myself in surprise but her grip was strong, and she began touching my body.
“Hey!” I shouted in protest, embarrassed at the situation. But the feeling of embarrassment gave way to pain as she pressed and felt where all of my bruises were, and ending it at my lower left rib. I gasped in pain that was soon replaced as she pulled out a dagger from somewhere and cut me on my hand, fresh red blood pooling out.
“Aethes save you Mira, he’s just a kid!”
“A possible shapeshifter, a mimic, or any other sort of illusory trick.” Mira stared at me intensely as I fell trying to get away from her grasp.
“Hmm,” Mira pondered. “You can never be too careful.” She produced some cloth from her bag and began tending to the cut she herself made.
“What is wrong with you lady?”
“I am trying to protect myself, and my companion. Many mages follow a school of thought that dungeons are living things that create a spatial dimension, feeding on the memories of anyone it consumes. It then bases the dungeon’s layout and environment on the very same memories.”
She tied an impossibly tight knot that made my left hand go numb that I immediately took away and ran back to Conroy who smiled sheepishly at me.
“The dungeon can and will use any tricks it knows, and it isn’t above creating a child to lower any adventurer’s guard.”
“I promise you she’s a lot nicer than you think,” Conroy assured me.
I rubbed the bandaged cut on my hand and glared at Mira who paid me no mind.
“We should head back,” Mira said. “It’s been three days with no lead, and now we’re separated from Kethel and Byron.”
Conroy sighed, “I guess you’re right but it’s still frustrating. How could an entire lake just disappear like that?”
“Anything is possible in these dungeons. Besides, we have to return the favour to the boy.”
My ears perked up before I spoke, “I was just by a lake! I went around it after I saw a flash that came from you I think.”
Conroy and Mira raised their eyebrows at me before looking at each other briefly. They both stood up and began packing things away.
“Are you sure about that kid?” Conroy asked as he stamped out the fire.
I stood up as Mira shooed me off of the bedroll. “I’m pretty sure, why what’s so important about it?”
“You’ll see,” Mira said while Conroy only flashed me a grin.
----------------------------------------
We reached the clearing where I first saw the adventurers soon after leaving the makeshift camp and I saw the corpses of the ferthur undergoing what I can only describe as a melting process. As each drop of rain hit a corpse, it made a sort of indent into the body as flesh, fur, and bone became mush and pooling together only to drip down onto the mud where it coalesced into some disgusting light-brown oil.
“The monsters that the dungeon creates disappear quickly,” Mira begins. “Each dungeon has a unique way of recycling the corpses and for this one, it’s the perpetual rain.”
I moved around the clearing, trying to reorient myself to find which direction I came from.
“The rain never stops?”
Mira nodded. “Jumping off of the theory that I said earlier, each dungeon has some kind of core that feeds on and processes the memories of every living thing that dies. For the Grey Deluge, it’s possible that it consumed either an individual with a strong will that had memories of a rainy forest, or many of the living things that died here had similar memories of a great storm.”
“Man, does it really matter?” Conroy asked, yawning while scratching the back of his neck. “All I need to know is if the dungeon made some valuable treasure or not.”
Mira stared at Conroy who gave her back a quizzical look before quickly dodging out of the way lest he be hit with the melting flesh from the ferthur that Mira flicked with her staff.
“Hey!”
“Anyways,” Mira said, turning to me and ignoring the bewildered Conroy. “It had been raining in the dungeons since the first step we went inside. If my calculations are correct, then we’ve been in this dungeon for four days and not once has it stopped. The cycle of night and day seems to be frozen here as well, stuck in a state of twilight. There’s enough light to see our surroundings but the grey clouds have completely hid whatever sky and sun this place has. To many mages like me, understanding how a dungeon works can help advanced scholastic research in many magic schools and help improve the lives of people.”
I looked up at the sky checking what Mira had said and she was right. Everywhere I looked there seemed to be some grey cloud that unnaturally obscured anything behind it. I absorbed the information that Mira gave me as we walked past the clearing. My mind feels like a clay jar that was shattered into hundreds of pieces that I must find. The problem is, I’m missing the base of a jar. Even if I were to find the other pieces, unless I have a base to stick it on to, I won’t be able to truly fix it.
“We’re almost at the lake,” I said, as I saw the trees beginning to disperse to give way to the shoreline.
The three of us picked up our pace and soon we reached open air, the rain falling stronger and faster to the ground. The same lake that I went around was still there, the many fireflies that flittered around the lake shrubs gave off one of the few colours in the dreary landscape. Conroy whistled at the view while Mira studied the lake. I realized then that I never got the chance to look into the lake itself, focused on trying not to get caught by the horsehead and then making sure I never lost the direction of where the flashes came from.
It was strange, the rain fell everywhere which included the lake but where there should be thousands of ripples where each droplet landed there was none.