image [https://i.imgur.com/8tbhrbk.jpg]
The glow stone slipped through the grill and fell 50 feet to the room below. It clattered across the floor, but nothing stirred or made a sound.
The space below appeared unlike the rest of the temple’s architecture. Its organic pearl surfaces curved around, like the ward worm’s lair—but it bore no silver and gold dots. Still, it excited me to see this alien architecture again. Perhaps kobolds pried out the cylinders, but the gaps in the grate weren’t wide enough for even kobolds to slip through.
Fabulosa looked through the bars. “See that, C-Belle? That’s what the worm room looked like—except it had metal dots and strips of lead on its surfaces.”
Charitybelle turned to me. “An aquatic species built that?”
“Yeah, when I communed with cylinders in the ward worm lair, it showed visions of lobster-fish. I don’t know if they built it, but they used it.”
A table-sized protrusion extended from the room’s floor. The light cast by the glow stone barely illuminated it. The same curvy white resin shaped the protrusion and the room. I crawled across the grill to another vantage. An old gnoll lay dead next to the protrusion, but no signs of struggle appeared beside it. I couldn’t tell since it lay out of range of Mineral Communion.
Charitybelle turned to me when my eyes refocused. “Do you see anything in the past that explains how the gnoll died?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. None of these rooms make sense.”
Fabulosa grabbed onto the grill and shook it. It didn’t rattle.
“I could smash my way through the grate, but that’s a long way down.” Charitybelle hoisted her siege hammer. I kept forgetting a weapon of structural damage gave us more options.
Fabulosa, however, didn’t like the idea. “Maybe. I don’t know. Let’s not destroy anything yet. Patch and I did a number on the worm room. We plucked out all the gold cylinders, and it stopped glowing with magic. As nice as it is to have gold, I feel a bit bad about it.”
I nodded in agreement. “Maybe we could force our way through as a last resort. There’s plenty of dungeon left to explore yet.”
As we peered down, Charitybelle cautioned Bruno not to fall through the grill, even though it looked like it couldn’t squeeze through.
The animal indignantly sniffed.
There seemed no way to get down there. I could Slipstream through the bars, but 50 feet lay beyond Slipstream’s range if dangers appeared. Running around alone wasn’t bright, with orange monsters running around.
“Lookee here, what’s this?” Fabulosa crawled away from the grate to pick up something small.
“Whatchu you got there, Fab?” asked Charitybelle.
Fabulosa held something in her fingers. “It’s a little wooden button. There’s a picture of a mouse on it…” her voice trailed off as if uncertain about her answer. She held up her other hand and spotted a trickle of blood.
Charitybelle tossed a quick Rejuvenate. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I just cut myself. There are little pieces of glass on the floor here.” She squinted and picked up something too small for me to see. She laughed and handed Charitybelle the button—who examined it before giving it to me.
“This isn’t a wooden button. That’s a cork vial stopper. The design could be a kobold. It looks like someone drank a potion here.”
I activated Mineral Communion on the grillwork beneath us. I watched until three gnolls appeared. One drank a potion, shrunk to the height of a doll, then dropped in through the grate. I couldn’t see what happened next because the gnoll fell beyond the stone’s line of sight.
I slapped the floor when I saw the vision. “That’s a shrink potion. It’s funny—the whole gnoll became half a foot tall. Even its nameplate shrank.”
Fabulosa cocked an eyebrow. “That sounds like a crafty way to hide.”
Charitybelle gave her a questioning glance.
Fabulosa explained her comment. “I’ve been chewing over how to become Invisible and why we haven’t seen invisibility spells. You know, like how Patch keeps talking about how to find teleportation. If the nameplate shrinks down, it’s close to being Invisible.”
Charitybelle shrugged. “What about Stealth?”
Fabulosa rolled her eyes. “That’s dark magic, and it’s good for only one bonus attack. If we could shrink and hide, we could cast spells without enemies knowing where to strike back at us. We could take people completely off guard.”
Fabulosa’s idea had merit. “That’s an interesting thought. But do doll-sized casters have shortened spell ranges?”
No one answered my question, but Charitybelle suddenly laughed and took the stopper from my hands. “Oh, I get it. That’s why they carved a little green mouse-head on the stopper! Aww, that’s so cute.”
I returned to my stone visions to see if I could learn anything else. The grated floor provided the lizard-folk a view into the lobster room below, but the lizard people seemed content to worship it from afar.
Our biggest disappointment hinged on the chimera’s lack of treasure. It made no sense why a monster stood here unless it guarded the chamber below, but the grates already did that. Did The Book of Dungeons just plop boss monsters down and forget about them? It made no sense. What did the monster eat? No visions of it appeared in Mineral Communion, leading me to believe it recently appeared. The area had no traps, hidden compartments, or secret doors.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
After returning to our feet, we retraced our steps past the metal tubes and into the star chamber.
Fabulosa pointed in the direction we came. “We entered from the south, and the north corridor dead-ends. Y’all want to take a gander at the stairs or try the door to the east?”
Dungeons typically got more exciting at the lower levels, but the western exit ended in a flight of stairs going up. Hoping to learn or find something useful, we moved toward the doors instead of the stairs.
Like the other doors, we could tell by the hinge along the top that this door swung upward. Mineral Communion confirmed its iron material, so a counterweight must have made it easier to move.
The door had a small hole instead of a doorknob. My stone visions showed how the lizardfolk opened it by inserting a lever and pulling it open. Without this handle-key, we couldn’t do it. We assessed our spells and abilities but determined only one could help—Magnetize.
I imagined purchasing Magnetize to fight opponents in plate armor, so using it to open a door felt anticlimactic. Still, this spell might have more utility than unbalancing opponents.
I spent the power point.
Charitybelle carried what I thought to be the best candidate for a handle, her Metamorphic Siege Hammer. Creeper’s wooden handle made it a poor choice, and our swords offered a grip for only one person.
She put her hammer against the door, and I cast the spell. We pulled. Our combined strength dislodged the rusted joint, and the door swung up so quickly that we fell backward into a pile.
Beyond the portal guarded a modest storeroom. It housed the trays, portable racks, and pews I’d seen with Mineral Communion, but everything looked fragile with rust.
Bruno sniffed the racks. Having picked up no scent, he disappeared behind the junk on the floor, searching for something of interest.
“I saw these gadgets in my visions.”
Charitybelle lifted the metal rack as if to test its weight. “What do they do again?”
I showed them how they worked. “The lizardfolk slipped gemstones into the trays. Little spotlights of moonlight or sunlight filtered through them. And these racks fit into little divots on the star chamber floor. Presumably, the racks line up with the spotlights.”
“What do the rays of light do?” Fabulosa asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Energize them with magic somehow?”
Fabulosa didn’t sound impressed. “It probably involved astrology or predicted tides. Don’t the orreries in Arlington do that—forecast when oceans are safe to travel?”
I shrugged.
Fabulosa pointed to what looked to be a metal trashcan lid with several elliptical holes big enough to stick my hand through. “And what is that?”
I picked it up and inspected it with Mineral Communion. The trash can lid featured five odd holes whose smooth edges looked intentionally crafted. It couldn’t contain anything with such large holes, so its purpose puzzled me.
Charitybelle pursed her lips. “It looks like a lid but doesn’t seem to fit onto anything.”
I shook my head. “It’s an alloy. Alloys are hard to read with Mineral Communion. Alloys warp memories and fill them with static. I get the same thing with dirt. When there’s sand or mixed soil, I get poor feedback.”
When we handled the racks and trays, rust rubbed onto our hands. The artifacts weren’t brittle, but the rust covering the symbols made them barely visible. Mineral Communion couldn’t help—rust corrupted visions. We inspected the gems remaining in the trays, but their common rarity and low quality convinced us they might hold value as a potential magic source. If we learned how to harness power from the stars later, this chamber might regain its purpose. The lack of treasure disappointed me. Having loosened the doorway, we closed it, leaving everything how we found it.
We crossed the star chamber and passed through the open doorway leading to the stairs. Bruno scurried ahead of us, typically eager to explore.
Charitybelle groaned, watching him go. “One drawback with Familiars is mental conversations with them aren’t always easy. Everywhere we go, Bruno wants to know what’s going to happen. He’s been bugging me about the stairs since we’ve been here. He’s like having a little brother, aren’t you, buddy?”
The badger growled in disapproval. It scurried into the doorway and paused at the stairs leading up. Charitybelle explained her pet’s issue. “I’ll have to carry him. He doesn’t like going up or down steps.”
The animal looked back at us, implying he didn’t appreciate waiting. He sniffed the air and seemed to have picked up a scent. Everything upstairs remained still.
“Will he bite me if I pick him up?”
“No, but he says he smells something rotting upstairs.”
This place didn’t seem like an undead dungeon. Bruno probably smelled another dead monster like the scorpions or the gnoll. He had trouble getting up the stairs and stopped, presumably so I could pick him up. Knowing that I could toss the badger at anything attacking me amused me. It would undoubtedly make Crimson’s highlight reel.
As I reached for the badger, I felt a hot stinging sensation on my arm and ear, and for a moment, I thought Charitybelle wrapped her arms around me and accidentally poked me with her weapons. The grip violently lifted me, and I instinctively kicked.
I looked up to see dripping tentacles extending from cabbagelike flesh—at least until the liquid entered my eyes and Blinded me. I’d caught only a glimpse of what held me.
Name
Sundew Abberation
Level
15
Difficulty
Easy (green)
Health
425/425
I activated Slipstream’s interface by reflex when a plant lifted me off the ground. Freezing time gave me an out-of-body perspective on my predicament. Because something grabbed me, the spell’s targeting interface showed no valid locations to jump, but I saw what held me.
Glistening, vinelike tentacles pulled me upward like a life-sized marionette. My puppeteer sprawled across the stairway ceiling—a Venus flytrap attached three stories above the doorway.
I hung defenseless. After closing the Slipstream interface, I zapped it with Scorch and Shocking Reach for a combined 60 damage, which erased only 14 percent of its health pool.
By the time Fabulosa and Charitybelle targeted the man-eating plant, I imbued my Black River Cudgel with magical damage. My hands tingled, and my arms went numb. It felt like my fingers had disappeared, and I dropped my mace and shield. The silvery glowing magic imbuement faded as the items clattered on top of Charitybelle, interfering with her spellcast.
Next to the icon for Grappled, a new debuff appeared in my interface.
Debuff
Fertilizer Paralyzer
-10 Willpower, -20 Agility, -30 Strength
Duration
30 seconds
It wasn’t a good sign that a carnivorous plant considered me to be fertilizer.
A salvo of spells from my companions dropped the plant’s health to half by the time it hauled me to the ceiling. Its lobes wrapped around me like jaws and sounded like tearing lettuce.
A cascade of digestive debuffs appeared in my peripheral vision. The debuffs displayed the same icon, so the acidic effects stacked. I had enough control of my digits to cast Scorch and Shocking Reach only once, but when the string of debuffs hit me, I lost the ability to perform even cantrips. When everyone’s offensive spells cooled down, an influx of healing hit me. My health seesawed between life and death.