Chapter 72: The dungeon caves of Almar
Felix Sythias’ POV:
I woke up with a weight lying on my chest, and something curled up between my arms. It was scaly and very cuddly, especially his slightly chubby belly. I smiled as I looked down at Alex. He was once again hugging his own tail and being all adorable. From his closed eyes and deep rhythmic breaths, it was clear he was still asleep.
I moved one of my talons to his head, rubbing the back of it gently. Even while asleep, he leaned into my touch. It was still a little impossible to believe I could do this so casually now, that we were dating now. But yesterday evening sure proved that notion of impossibility wrong.
Touching the tip of my snout, where my equivalent of lips were, I had to suppress a giggle—I didn’t want to wake Alex. While we had made out during that sunset, it was nothing compared to what we did last evening. We’d kissed for a much longer time, and near the end, Alex even got comfortable enough again to allow me to let my talons roam his upper body, so long as I didn’t rub his ridges again like that—we weren’t quite ready for the heat that would bring. I smiled at the memory of Alex grabbing my talon and placing it on his side, a shy expression on his face. We’d talked about it, then continued full force. It was cute.
We’d stopped long before Tiki came back. Eager as we were, not even we could fill an hour doing nothing but kissing. So we cuddled while we read our books until we finally fell asleep.
I noticed motion from the side and when I looked over, I saw Tiki getting out of her tent. She yawned and stretched and shivered. She looked at our firepit and our small supply of wood and sighed.
“Good morning,” I whispered to her.
She startled a little, then spotted me and Alex and smiled. “Good morning,” she whispered back.
“If you stack some of the wood, I can light it from here.”
She nodded and did as I said, and I set the wood aflame with a small bolt of fire. Like most of my magic, it was useless in combat, but was great for things like this. It was more utility magic than anything else, but that was fine. Tiki took a small pot and went to the river to grab some water. Meanwhile, I kept an eye on the campfire while I softly petted Alex’s head.
When she got back, she put the pot by the fire while she grabbed our cups and tea. I’d taken a few tea-bags with us that were made of some kind of magical herb that would boost our wakefulness and energy for the day. It was a bit expensive so we couldn’t drink it all the time, but it was perfect for this excursion.
As the smell of the tea wafted out, Alex stirred and opened his eyes.
“Good morning, sleepy scales,” I said. “Did you sleep well?”
He blinked and sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Sleepy scales?” he asked.
I shrugged, which was a bit awkward with him still sitting on top of me. “If you can call me a big stupid lizard, I think I can call you sleepy scales.”
“Hmm, I like it,” he said.
I chuckled. “Want to go eat breakfast?”
He nodded and got off, leaving me ever so slightly disappointed. He accepted the cup of tea from Tiki and grabbed us all some jerky from our supply. We ate and drank in companionable silence. Then Tiki looked at her watch and noticed it was later than we thought, so we quickly finished breakfast and went to equip our gear. Well, Alex and Tiki did. There wasn’t much I had to do. In the end, I just helped Alex get his armor on.
Soon, we were ready to go, so we went to the clearing we’d been told to gather at in the morning. It was the clearing right beside the entrance to the cave system.
We were one of the last groups to arrive, and soon Scott called everyone to gather around him.
“Good morning, everyone!” he said. “I hope you all slept well because we got a packed schedule today. We have a total of four activities today, including going down into the caves and fighting with the monsters down there! We’ll be splitting you all into four groups and you’ll each take turns being allowed in. The other activities are Skill practice, where the staff will help you train and level your Skills. The second activity is cooking, where the staff will help you make bread and other more complex meals for lunch. And last, but not least, general survival skills, where the staff will teach you things you should know when out camping, like how to get fresh water, and which berries you should never eat. You can choose for yourself which one your group will do, so long as you’re back here in time for your turn.”
I glanced at Alex and lowered my head to his. “I think we should work on your Skills in the time we’re up here. I have some ideas for a magic resistance skill we can use to merge your others.” I turned to Tiki. “Unless you have any issues with that.”
Tiki shook her head, and Alex nodded. “That sounds good,” he said.
Professor Scott continued with explaining which party was assigned to which group. We were put in group one and would be one of the first to go down and explore the caves. I was very interested in how it was and looked down there. I’d read about, of course, but reading about it just wasn’t the same as actually seeing it for yourself. Even if the drawings were rather detailed.
The other three groups left, leaving only our group of about twenty-five people.
“Alright,” Scott said, “I already gave this talk to the hunting groups yesterday, but there are some basic safety rules you all need to know. First and foremost is that you need to listen to your supervisor, whether that is a professor or an assistant. If they tell you to take a break, you take a break. If they tell you to stop for the day, you will stop. If I find out you didn’t listen, you will be suspended from going down there for the remainder of the excursion. Is that understood?”
Everyone called out their agreement, and Scott nodded in satisfaction.
“Alright, the second thing is that when you get injured, you will have your supervisor check your injury after the fight. They’ll check if your first aid was enough or if you need to step out of the fight entirely and see a healer. Rule three is—”
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Scott explained the rest of the rules and even asked some random people about them to see if they’d paid attention. He’d already explained them all to us three yesterday, so it wasn’t anything new to me. I tuned him out and looked behind him, at the giant gaping hole in the ground.
It was weird how almost perfectly round it was. Like someone had carved a perfect circle deep into the ground. From reading, I knew that the hole was almost two hundred meters deep, and about a dozen meters wide.
With my wingspan being about eight meters, and my length, if I included my tail, being about half that, there would be enough clearance for me to hover down without hitting the sides. It meant I wouldn’t have to climb down or, worse, not be able to join at all.
The rest of the students would take an elevator down, but it only carried so many people at once and simply didn’t fit me. It was too small. At least Alex and Tiki wouldn’t have to take the stairs down. The stairs formed a spiral on the walls of the hole and were uncomfortably narrow. At least they looked solid.
I turned my head back to Scott, who was just about finishing up his speech. “Alright, now that everything has been explained, please line up so we can start heading down. An assistant will check your gear before you’re allowed into the carriage.”
We all lined up, and our group was in the back of the queue. It took a while before it was our turn, but the assistant quickly looked us over, asked some questions about our gear and what we planned to use them for, then let Tiki and Alex onto the elevator. The doors closed, and I waved them goodbye as the carriage started climbing down the wall.
A moment later, and a small distance to the side, I jumped over the edge, and together with Scott, descended down the hole.
As I got further down, there was less and less light that reached me. When I looked up from about halfway down, the opening looked so small I could hold a single claw next to it with it being the same size. The only reason I hadn’t yet flown into any of the walls was that the entire hole was illuminated with a spiraling array of light enchantments. One for each of the narrow steps of the staircase.
A few minutes later, I finally set down on the floor. It was remarkably warm. I’d expected it to be ice-cold, but it was actually slightly warm. Not very warm, but noticeable. If anyone else noticed as well, they didn’t say anything. Perhaps that was because they were wearing shoes.
The professor gathered us together again and led us down the only tunnel. It too was weirdly, almost perfectly round.
“The walls are creepy,” Alex murmured to me. No one had spoken loudly since we came down here. “They almost look like they were made.”
I nodded in agreement
The tunnel was luckily only a few hundred meters long, and we reached the other end in only a few minutes.
The tunnel opened up into a gigantic cavern. It was at least a kilometer wide, and almost fifty meters high. The ceiling was covered in patchy shiny moss that made it look like you were watching the night sky, but without a moon. The rest of the ceiling was covered in a moss so deeply black that it was difficult to make out the shapes underneath. It was as beautiful as it was unsettling.
The floor of the cavern was covered in large stalagmites and other pillars. There was some moss here and there, but nothing like the ceiling. And aside from some mushrooms, the cave didn’t have any plant-life. Even from up here, near the raised entrance, I could see hundreds of beasts crawling around in small groups.
And while it was difficult to make out the walls in the distance, it was clear enough to understand where the name had come from. The walls were covered in small alcoves, but they were all blocked off by eerily perfect bars of stone, where stalactites had met stalagmites. They looked like the cells you might find in an old-fashioned dungeon.
“Now, that’s awesome,” Tiki said
I nodded. “You can say that again.”
“That’s a lot of monsters,” Alex said, his voice wary. He’d grabbed his tail in his hands and was fidgeting with it. “Like, a lot of monsters.”
“Yeah, but look how far apart they all are.” I pointed to the clusters of monsters. They were all quite a distance apart, and there were always some, if not many, obstacles in the way. From small cliffs they couldn’t climb up, to walls of stalagmites they’d have to get around. “And remember what the professor said, their senses aren’t all that great. They mostly hunt by smell, if they hunt at all.”
“I know, I know. But still, that’s a lot of monsters.”
Yeah, I couldn’t argue with that. By my count, there had to be hundreds, if not thousands, of monsters here. They looked weak, though. And small, even when you considered I was looking at them from a distance.
“Alright, everyone,” Scott called. “We’ll be starting now, so please find your assigned guide and follow their instructions. I’ll stay up here and keep watch. Remember to stay in the areas I can see.”
Following his instructions, we headed to the assistant assigned to guide us and keep us safe. I didn’t think it would be necessary, but the safety net was nice.
We were the first group to go down into the cavern. We followed a well-trodden path that led down and away from the entrance. From there, we followed the assistant for a while as she guided us some distance to the side. That way we wouldn’t run into any other students later.
While we were traveling, we ran into our first cluster of monsters and the guide hopped onto a nearby stalagmite to let us deal with it. The monsters were ugly, with wrinkled skin where eyes usually were, twisted muscles, and short stumpy legs. They vaguely resembled a mole-rat, if mole-rats were the size of foxes, and had mutated flesh and scales sticking out in places and at angles that scales shouldn’t be.
I immediately fell into my ready-stance, and Tiki and Alex beside me did the same, drawing her bow and readying his sword. A moment later, the monsters still hadn’t attacked. Instead, they sniffed at the air, and listened to sounds. But we were breathing quietly and didn’t make much noise. They hadn’t noticed us yet.
With slow movements, I caught Tiki’s attention and mimed her releasing the arrow. She nodded silently and focused back on the mutated mole-rats. With a painfully loud twang, the arrow shot forward from her bow and buried itself deep in the closest monster, penetrating through and bolting it to the ground.
I winced as it screeched, my wings pulling forward to cover my ears at least a small bit. It only lasted a moment before the screech gurgled, then stopped. The other mole-rats spun to their fallen kin and then to Tiki. They sniffed the air once, then without any hesitation, rushed at her.
I was still a bit stunned from their insanely loud screech and was late to react, but Alex jumped forward, and, having dropped his swords to cover his ears, kicked the closest rat straight in the face. It caved in with an awful crunch and a squelch, before it flew away, smashing into a rock and limply falling to the ground. The others scrambled to get to Alex’s feet, climbing up his legs and trying to bite in. His armor stopped most of it, and his own scales the rest.
After the initial shock wore off, he mostly just looked annoyed as he started shaking his legs to get rid of them, like they were nothing but a few insects that had crawled on his pants rather than the cat-sized monstrosities that they were. He stomped on the ones that fell off, crushing their bodies into pulp.
I shook my head one last time, throwing off the pain and dizziness, and dove forward as well. Did he need help? Not really. He’d get it anyway.
I grabbed one of the mole-rats. It barely fit into one of my talons, but there was no way it was escaping. It was twisting and turning in my grasp, rabidly trying to bite me with its uncomfortably long teeth. I squeezed hard, and it stopped moving with a strangled yelp, all its internal organs and bones turned to mush. With a sharp motion, I sent the corpse hurtling into the group of mole-rats at Alex’s feet, knocking a few over.
Tiki took advantage of the distraction to lose a few arrows into their midst, killing a handful of rats. And the rest died to Alex’s stomps.
What had started out as a group of almost twenty mole-rats was now nothing more than a small pile of dead bodies.