Kyrel
The mages dedicated themselves to guiding the group solely by magelight from that point onwards, not keeping any of their fuel in reserve for combat spells. Traditionally, magelight(s) were a very mana efficient school of magic. In the current setting, however, the dungeon slowly leached away at the mana bindings that composed the magelights, causing them to need constant upkeep. It didn’t help that the two mages still with the group were trying to light the way for the entire group.
The rest of the trip through the abandoned subterranean slums was uneventful, and the group soon found themselves in another declining tunnel. This one was far kinder and allowed them to make the choice. To descend or not to descend, was that really a question? Kyrel led the remaining fifty or so men down the new tunnel, figuring any progress was good progress at this point. Eventually they wanted to head upwards, but first he wanted to be out of that ramshackle ghost town.
To everybody's delight, the tunnel was a shorter one than the last. It took them ten minutes to walk through it cautiously before they found the end. Apart from a hole in the ground, it was a dead end. Nobody was really ecstatic about jumping in another hole, but neither did anyone want to backtrack to the town full of giant beetles and burnt flesh. A short-swordsman took the leap first.
“I don’t see anything.” He shouted back up to the hole, causing Kyrel to cringe. The man’s voice peeled off the walls and echoed around the chamber he was in, giving Kyrel a rough gauge of the size of the room, and it was much smaller than the one they’d come from.
“Go ahead, if nothing ripped his throat out the moment he yelled then it is probably clear.” Kyrel gave a mage and a few more men the go ahead to leap. Shortly after his feet touched the ground the man started pumping mana into his light, but it didn’t do too much to dispel the gloom. Kyrel and the rest of the mercs followed shortly afterwards.
After entering the room Kyrel realized it was a lot brighter than the warren was, with fungus coating every wall and shining at a brighter intensity than before. He also noticed that the part of the room that they’d leapt from was the lowest in the room, causing the echoing to give him the illusion that the room was smaller than it was. Kyrel ordered the two mages to dial-back on the lights for a while and start regenerating their mana in case of conflict. If he wasn’t wrong, they were now in the dungeon proper and should be ready for a battle.
From where they stood, the fungus illuminated most of the wall in every direction. They found themselves with their backs to a wall already, after having jumped down from the roof, and could spot an exit on the exact opposite side of the oval shaped chamber. A gathering of stalagmites limited the group’s vision near the center of the room and there were a couple of dark patches where it seemed like none of the glowing fungus was growing. In Kyrel’s mind, they were either obvious traps or misdirection.
“Okay, so here is what we know. This is a relatively new dungeon, albeit a bit fast growing. The last info we have on the dungeon was from a couple weeks back, the Greensong party seems to run the dungeon at least once a week to watch for abnormal growth and what not. So far, the dungeon has not been noted as being particularly crafty or clever and has four floors of monsters. Lots of monsters. The growth is much faster than usual, but the dungeon isn’t filling in the space with much at all.
“They theorize that something traumatic happened to the core in its infancy, causing its instincts go haywire and dig as deep as it could as fast as it could. Some villager or another corroborated the theory, but what really matters here is that we should be ready for some fights. As long as we head up instead of down, it shouldn’t do anything funny.” Turq, the terrain and planning guy in Kyrel’s party, reminded everyone before they proceeded.
Slowly, the group started proceeding forward. Although he said the dungeon wouldn’t be doing any funny business, they all knew what happened when large parties entered dungeons together. Kingdoms could invade a dungeon together and still lose, a dungeon would almost never lose a war of attrition and were capable of amazing things when they were being threatened. The dungeon probably had no way of knowing they hadn’t intended to enter it. How would it understand that the forest’s guardian dumped them there?
When they got to the center of the room there was a change, the air on the back of Kyrel’s neck stood up and he dodged out from the group instantly with a shout of warning, along with a few more with refined combat senses.
From above a giant bat dropped, a bat twice the size of Kyrel, and landed on two men who were caught unawares. Both men were crushed into a jumbled mess of visible bones and pulverized organs, unconditionally, and were located under the feet of the colossal bat. Several other men had been thrown asunder when the beast landed and were rolling away and recovering to their feet.
Now that it had dropped from the vast blackness that was the roof above them, the group had a good sight on the guardian of the chamber they were located in. Kyrel had already assumed they were in a boss chamber, much like that cultist had been dropped into, but he didn’t expect to encounter an undocumented beast.
The guardian was, as mentioned, a massive black bat. It stood a little over eleven feet tall and seven feet wide, with a wingspan of around 25 feet. The wings terminated in large hands that currently rested on the cavern floor as the bat glared at the party, tapered off with 4 black metallic looking claws. The feet were much the same, with the claws that is, and the bat had three horns. One on its nose, and one above either eye.
Upon further inspection, Kyrel realized this one, too, was mounted. A black leather harness, that disturbingly matched the bat, wrapped around its stomach and around either wing as to not constrict movement. A large dungeon goblin, as they were listed in the Adventurer's Guild notes, sat upon its back with a crude spear in its hands. Kyrel’s first thought was that it was expecting a mid-air joust, a stupid idea inside a cave system. He then spotted the tall quiver strapped beside the goblin, filled with more crude spears, and realized he was the one who’s thinking had been defective.
All of this Kyrel registered in less than a second, simultaneously raising his crossbow and firing off a bolt at the beast’s face. The goblin would have easily been able to duck for cover, so injuring the bat would be the easiest. Several other men fired off their weapons most aiming for the bat’s face and a couple for the goblin upon its back. Every single shot missed, however, as the bat shot straight back into the air with its powerful hind legs. Powerful bursts of airs from the winged-beast’s flaps caused a couple projectiles to stray from their original path, injuring a few people but killing none.
In less than five seconds, the beast had pounced, killed two men and disrupted their formation, and then fled safely back into the yawning darkness above them. Even those wings would have extinguished any non-magical torches, this chamber was the king of guerilla warfare.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
“Get to the other side as fast as possible, the beast is too large to fit through the next tunnel! Mages, light the roof up with fire as you run. Archers, time your shots with the illumination. If we keep it dodging, it will have less time to attack. Move, move, MOVE!” Kyrel shouted as he ran toward the tunnel, cranking back his crossbow to reload it. Magelights were entirely extinguished as the group ran toward the illuminated tunnel opposite.
“Now!” Shouted one of the mages as he fired a burst of flame over his shoulder after having waited for the rest of the group to reload their weapons. The fire was nowhere near the bat but still caused it to screech down at the group as it banked away from the light. Several projectiles flew through the air toward the bat, a couple lodging themselves in the thick leathery skin. Another projectile, however, flew through the air unobserved, and grazed the mage’s shoulder. The crude spear continued forward before lodging itself in the cavern floor, tripping the mage who was already stumbling from the impact.
“It’s targeting the mages! Fire blindly and run, if we lose them during this retreat we are going to be bumping through the dungeon in the dark!” Kyrel lamented the loss of their torches. Without the massive torches here, the fire tossed out wasn’t causing any explosions. Had they not ditched them in the town he could have had the mages continue to single themselves out while he escapes. As it was, he could only rely on luck and hope that the cave goblin didn’t aim for him. A man to Kyrel’s left suddenly stopped running and dropped to the cave floor like a sack of potatoes, skewered through the chest with a barbed spear.
He continued to pump quarrels over his shoulder as he fled, and eventually entered the tunnel on the far side. He kept running before turned over and aiming his crossbow back toward the entrance. The bat couldn’t fit, but that didn’t mean that the goblin wouldn’t dismount and give chase. Four other crossbow users pivoted as they passed Kyrel and trained their weapons on the opening, waiting for the enemy, but he never appeared. Eventually, mercenaries also stopped filtering in, the men slowing down behind the defensive line and learning against the wall. In the dim, glowing light of the fluorescent fungus, several corpses could be seen slowly bubbling in their draining life blood. One of the dying men made eye contact with Kyrel, soundlessly moving his mouth as the light drained from his eyes.
Both mages had survived the gauntlet, as well as Kyrel’s entire original party, but several groups would never feel complete again. Of the 54 men who exited the desolate city, only 29 of them had any hope left of making it out alive. Bandages were wrapped once again, field stitches sewn for those who needed them, and the group continued onwards. Every time they left a room more and more men were shed from the party like arrows on battlefield. At this rate, Kyrel didn’t know how many would escape. He’d vastly underestimated this young dungeon, thinking that the group could handle any challenge thrown at them.
As they progressed through the tunnel, they were more vigilant than ever. With so few men left, they knew that every man they lost at this point was one closer to them being the one left behind. The tunnels had tripwires and poorly disguised pits within them, poorly disguised traps that were easily avoided by hugging against the walls of the tunnel. There were no more massive flying bats, but there were several goblins in each room armed with spears. The group made short work of them, grunts on an even playing field didn’t stand a chance against fireballs and arrows. The last room before the first staircase they located was filled with colorful plants, valuable herbs if Kyrel wasn’t mistaken.
“First room of each floor is usually a gathering room. Pick what you can, pack it away. We’re going to need a lot of bribes if we are going to get our way out of this mess. Escaping the dungeon is only the first step.” The staircase ascended, which everybody there had mixed feelings about. On one hand, it was one step closer to the way out, on the other it was going to lead to a boss room. Kyrel plucked a quarter bushel of bright red peppers that he did not recognize and a few deep blue fern-like plants. The room was picked clean, leaving behind only the stalks and roots so that the plants could re-grow as was common courtesy.
The group ascended ready for battle and wasn’t disappointed. The boss here was one that they were familiar with, through the Greensong notes, a goblin who used darkness aligned magic. The goblin had mottled, dark green skin that was scarcely visible beneath the skeletal armor that he wore. He was attended by two archers with shoddy short bows and four spearmen. The battle was far less difficult than the previous boss, only two men ended up falling into an eternal sleep before the mage went down. Without the black mana shielding the others from arrows and spears, the rest of the goblins were slain quickly.
The fight could have gone a lot worse had they not known the tactics ahead of time. The losses were due to lack of experience and non-remembrance. The mercs never intended to enter the dungeon this deeply, so they had only given the report a cursory glance and study out of curiosity. They were finally on familiar ground, but it also meant they’d just entered the fourth floor. The dungeon had experienced another growth that had yet to be observed, their group was the unfortunate victim of it.
They progressed throughout the dungeon, completing each floor with minimum casualties and collecting what they could at the first room of each floor. Kyrel and a few others had noticed that the dungeon monsters were not dropping loot on death, but nobody voiced it out loud. It only reaffirmed the dungeon’s wrath over their overly large party. The third floor still had the first appearance of the goblin archers in its boss room, a full group of four and four attending spearmen. The second-floor boss consisted of seven goblin spearmen, everything was as the reports said. Without pickaxes, they could only collect the herbs that they knew were valuable along with everything in the first room of each floor, the last room they found before the staircase up.
Everything went as order until the first-floor boss room. A single goblin stood guard, staring at the staircase from the second floor. It stood taller than the goblins they'd encountered previously, almost the full height of the shortest man in the party. Kyrel fired off a crossbow bolt directly at the goblin’s chest but it was swiftly deflected by the spear.
Alarm registered for a brief moment as Kyrel realized that the spear wielded by the floor one boss was the highest quality weapon he’d seen down there, his own included. All twenty-four of the mercenaries remaining poured out of the staircase behind him, firing off their ranged weapons and spells. Bolts were deflected, arrows snapped away, and fireballs nimbly avoided. The swordsmen approached with weapons at the ready, followed by those who had looted spears from the previous floors.
Kyrel couldn’t help sense something was amiss and signaled to his group to circle around the side, ready to flee at the drop of a deci. The first swordsmen were batted to the side as the goblin darted around blades and swiped out with its spears. The level of spearmanship was far above most humans Kyrel had met before, let alone the typical floor one boss. Then he saw it.
From the staircase behind the rest of the archers and mages, more goblins started appearing, running out with spears and remaining as silent as possible. The graceful spearmen on the floor was only present to stall the mercenaries as long as possible.
“Ambush!” Kyrel shouted to warn those still remaining as he turned to flee with his party of six. A shout behind him clued him in to the fact that his warning had come too late. The party sprinted through the first floor of the dungeon as if the floor was falling away beneath their feet. Not stopping to kill any more monsters or loot any herbs. Pits were leapt, tripwires dodged, and dropbats ignored. The party gained several cuts and bruises before finding the slope upwards.
Kyrel broke out of the dungeon and instantly fell to his knees heaving. Vomit spilled beneath his lips, a mixture of stress and overexertion. He looked to the sky and found the daylight slowing breaking its way through the trees, stars still visible as a moon frowned down at his party. To his left and right were his party members. Behind him was the dungeon entrance, which nobody else exited from, and in front of him… In front of him were several Annahmia guards with their weapons trained on his neck, surrounded by the citizens that had escaped into the forest as well as the cultists who had been enjoying their sabbath.
Kyrel and his men were arrested rather than executed, and their fate was precarious at best.