Oz stumbled into the delta worldlet from the portal to the acid rain worldlet. He held his hands firmly over his eyes, but the rest of his face showed a pained grimace. His voice held pain and anger. “Dragon teeth and burning bones! Rotting goblin ears! Peaking rotten goblin burning bones!” The other people in his group stumbled back out of the portal behind him. They rubbed their eyes and wiped rain from their faces.
After a few moments, one of the others spoke to Oz. “You should not have kept your eyes open, Oz. We can follow the vine well enough to find another portal with eyes closed.”
Oz whirled towards the voice, squinting his eyes in pain. “Eyes closed?” He yelled in disbelief. “Eyes rotting closed? With burning dungeon creatures swarming us in every room? Go climb a mountain, Sif.”
Sif, the one who had spoken, made an exasperated sound. “It’s just been a handful of these fae-blighted critters. We can probably just stomp our way through the whole burning place.”
Oz glared at Sif for a moment, then turned and walked away. The others looked back and forth between themselves, worried that Oz was leaving. Oz walked up to a monster corpse and speared it through the middle. He returned to the group with a snake dangling from the end of his spear. “You see this, Sif?” Oz said. “This is a snake. Scales, it’s a big snake.” Oz waved the snake slowly around so everyone had to look at the creature. “The first week these green ghosts showed up in the dungeon, a harvester lost a foot.”
One of the others, (Sif’s twin sister, Sig) furrowed her brows in confusion. “It doesn’t look like a venomous variety.”
“It wasn’t venom.” Oz audibly struggled not to yell. “It was an acid snake. Bit him and burned off his foot at the rotting ankle.” Oz snapped his spear to his shoulder to throw the snake corpse off behind him. He heard a few caws from the ravens that had followed around the dungeon floors. Oz continued, “I’m not going back in there until we have…” Oz floundered for a moment, trying to think of something. “Dark glass to protect our burning eyes. If we can’t see, we could get separated or overwhelmed. We won’t find any treasure on the mountain if we’re dead.” Oz paraphrased an old saying about adventurers looking for dragon hoards.
The fourth member of the group, Tarka, took a breath and let it out. “He’s right.” The voice was from the same person that Oz had spoken to at the roundhouses—the one other than the old man who had bought the spear. The man wore black and grey clothing and wielded a bronze sword. Tarka spoke again, “Even with a blind-fighting skill, you have to have some familiarity with the area or the enemy. It’s all right, a little delay for some dark glass won’t leave us starving.” Oz nodded at Tarka in gratitude. The man was not tall; thin with short, greying hair. He kept his beard trimmed down to stubble which showed off his strong jaw and lean face. Tarka’s appearance was a strong contrast to the twins. They had large soft looking faces with light brown hair and dark brown eyes. They dressed in similar outfits of creamy tan and wielded axes.
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“But” Tarka said, disappointing Oz, “I think we must at least take a short look through the other portal.” Tarka pointed off to the side where a second large vine ended in midair—a sure sign of a portal in this dungeon. Sig and Sif gave sounds of assent and started walking. Oz hesitated, unsure about the wisdom of resisting, then sighed and followed after the others.
Through the other portal, they found the oasis worldlet. The light in that worldlet was dim, as though dusk had arrived. Oz looked around at the mostly empty worldlet and tasted the dry air. The large vine stretched down the sand and along one edge of the pond. The pond was surrounded by moss and rippled slightly from the small breeze. Dim light reflected off the pond.
Sif stepped forward. “This is nice. I wonder if there are fish in that pond.”
Oz’s eyes were pulled away from the pond by motion in the air. “Above!” He shouted and lifted his spear into a higher guard. A small cloud of butterflies flapped lazily above the group. As the others looked up, multiple butterflies released a spray of acid down on them. Tarka yelled in surprise and ran back through the portal. Oz was all for leaving, but he was caught off guard by Tarka abandoning the group so suddenly. He yelled out to Sig and Sif who hadn’t noticed the older man’s retreat. “Back out the portal! Run!”
Oz swept his spear sideways to try and fan the acid away from himself, but Sig and Sif were further in and had no choice but to run through the spray as it fell. Sif yelled in pain but the twins made it through the portal. Oz followed immediately behind.
The spirit of exploration had abandoned the party, it seemed. Tarka hiked back through the delta worldlet without discussion. Sif and Sig wiped acid from their skin and rinsed in the water on the ground. Sif had been injured on his neck by the acid spray and was bleeding. Oz looked at Sif’s injury, but he didn’t have much knowledge of wound treatment. The man would scar, but that was a much better result for a neck would than it could have been. Oz tried discussing preparations the group could make for the next delve into the dungeon, but the twins weren’t very interested.
Outside the dungeon, Oz caught up to Tarka and forced the man to discuss necessary preparations for the next dungeon delve. Tarka was a bit surprised that Oz wanted to discuss it further than “get dark glass”, but he was open to the idea of a few simple supplies and an hour of training for the group. Tarka made it clear that the other ‘delvers’ wouldn’t tolerate long or formal training. Oz decided that he had gotten all he would get from the conversation and went home.