Over the course of the next two days, I returned for more magic lessons. The sessions weren’t quite as long as the first, but were productive, nonetheless. I was able to successfully get to a point where I could comfortably control most spells I cast. Berrilus gave me a brief summary of how exactly rituals, enchantments, and the like all functioned, but we didn’t spend much time on that as I could never see myself making use of those things.

Rituals involve a number of different materials, and the only real useful ones were so expensive to set up that nobody without access to a treasury could use them. Enchantments were another can of worms entirely, utilizing an incredibly complex set of runes, which had to be precisely set up in order to achieve the desired effect. A half-degree rotation in any direction could end up corrupting the spell and have unintended consequences. The main benefit to either was that the effect could be repeated until the materials were used up, requiring only the bare minimum of effort to activate. It was all interesting information to have, but ultimately wouldn’t do well to serve my cause.

I was glad to have turned down those lessons, as on my fourth day in Nakstal, my sleep was abruptly disturbed by pounding on my door. I willed my eyes open, and looked to see that it was just barely dawn. People wake up too damn early here, I thought as I made my way to the door. I cracked it open to see who was knocking, and was confused to see a man waiting in casual clothing.

“Zachary Petel,” he asked. I was immediately suspicious, unsure if we’d met before. It was surprisingly difficult to tell, with him being the first person I’d seen wearing what I would call normal clothes. I must not have hidden my concern very well, because he quickly followed up with an apology. “Please forgive me. My name is Iyarin Mesk; you and your party are supposed to be escorting me through the dungeon today. Selia gave me your information.”

My concerns were assuaged as Iyarin introduced himself, but I was left no less confused than when I had opened the door. “My party? Sorry, but you’re stuck with just little old me. I took the job on my own,” I explained. He tilted his head to the side and gestured into the hallway.

“Then I take it you don’t know these gentlemen?” As I craned my head around the doorframe, I saw two men standing in full suits of armor, swords and other miscellaneous gear strapped to them anywhere they could reach. It took me a moment, but I realized their armor looked familiar.

“Wait, were you two the ones sitting in the lobby when I came looking for work? Why not take the job yourselves if you wanted it,” I asked, wondering what their angle could be. Noble individuals or not, no sane person would go somewhere a dozen people had died on a whim, so they’d need to earn my trust a little. The larger of the two spoke up first, cutting off his friend.

“I don’t particularly want to go, but the way I see it, if you’re perfectly willing to go in alone, you either know something that others don’t or are powerful enough that it doesn’t matter,” he stated as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Before he could continue, the other man piped in.

“And I’m going to make sure that if you get into a rough spot, he doesn’t get himself killed trying to save you,” he said with sarcastic glee. My skepticism melted away from their flawed reasoning. They were exactly the kind of people I was accustomed to dealing with. An opportunistic moron and his manic protector, I thought. While certainly not reliable, those types are downright predictable. There was no question of how much trust they would be worthy of, which made things infinitely simpler.

“Well I planned to go alone, but so long as nobody gets in my way, that shouldn’t be a problem. Hell, if you two just hang back with Irayim to keep him safe as backup in case something goes wrong, I’ll just take twenty platinum and you can split the other eighty,” I offered. That was already twice as much as I needed, and I was more than willing to part with the rest if it meant not having hundreds of pounds of steel following me around and making a bunch of noise. I’d never had the raw strength to get myself out of trouble while I was growing up, so I had to figure out how not to get caught in the first place.

The offer of easy money satisfied them without a fuss, and we made our way out of the city. The walk to the dungeon was pleasant, thanks to some very mild weather. The trail to Lyria traversed the woods in some areas, and it was in one of those parts that we split off into the trees. After about a mile of walking, we came across something very out of place. In the middle of the forest floor, there was tear in the ground. Around said tear, all the plant life was withering and dying within a five foot radius.

To say it wasn’t what I was expecting would be an understatement. The word dungeon brought many things to mind; a torture basement, primitive prison facilities, or just plain ancient ruins. An open wound in the world itself was not among the list. I looked at the others and found them all wearing dark, serious expressions. I steeled my nerves as they all nodded, allowing me to be the first to make the descent. I looked down into the crack and spotted light coming from somewhere within.

Curiosity taking hold over fear, I started my climb down, winding my way through forty feet of stone and dirt. Shortly after I reached the bottom, my comrades were at my side. A few things stood out to me immediately. The first was that we were in what looked to be a man made tunnel. The stone that made up the walls was ground smooth, and wooden boards had been laid down to serve as flooring. My second observation was the lack of a visible source of the light, despite it permeating every visible space. And last but not least, my skin was tingling and I felt incredibly warm. My mind was brought back to the wakeright tea I had been introduced to, and I quickly realized that the air was thick with magical energy.

The realization made me uneasy, but I refused to let it show on my face as I picked a direction and started walking. We happened upon the occasional door, taking our time to check each one to make sure nothing was lurking behind them. Most of the rooms were sleeping quarters, with the odd office space. On rare occasions we would find more generalized living spaces or a cafeteria, lending a very bunker-like feel to the place. My unease continued to grow the longer we went without finding anything significant, anticipation clearing the way for paranoia to take hold.

After a couple hours, we came across a staircase leading deeper underground, and followed it down. The lower level was lit much more poorly, reduced to a dim glow, yet still maintained acceptable visibility. While where we had entered the dungeon, there was only one tunnel, there were several tunnels branching off from the main one here. With the extra flanking routes available, I decided it was time to draw my pistol and take things even more slowly.

The second level appeared to be more utilitarian in its purpose, containing several cell blocks for holding prisoners, and the occasional torture chamber. While it had been more in line with what I was expecting of a dungeon, reality was king when it came to tempering expectations, or in my case, crushing them. The air was damp and musty, thick with the odor of mold and mildew. I suddenly wondered if the previous groups had failed to come back due to the air quality, but I was still feeling entirely normal, so I decided to press on.

After another hour of quietly stalking our way through the dungeon, I thought I couldn’t be any more on edge. That was when I heard movement from inside a room as I placed my hand on the door. I raised my hand, indicating for everyone to stop in their tracks. Thankfully, they obeyed, and I was given enough time to use hand gestures to convey that something was inside. The two dungeoneers that tagged along readied their weapons and slowly joined me by the door, taking care to be as quiet as possible.

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Once they reached me, I took a step back and readied my gun. I signaled for them to open the door, and the smaller of the two ripped the door open. Immediately, a high-pitched shriek emanated from the room and I fired two rounds in a panic as two large figures came charging out. The first round hit, causing the creature to shriek again, but the second missed and flew through the door, slamming into a wall and sending fragments of stone flying back at me.

I used my arm to shield my face, but that had the unfortunate side effect of obstructing my view. I heard steel meet stone as a sword strike missed its mark. As I lowered my arm, I saw the figures headed straight for me. I tried to ready my pistol for another shot, but they were too fast. To my surprise, at the last second, they sidestepped me and tried to head for one of the side tunnels. Only one was lucky enough to escape, as my shot in the other had proven fatal as it keeled over dead halfway into their chosen tunnel, having bled out.

I walked up to the creature and couldn’t help but release the tension through a fit of laughter. Laying there in a pool of its own blood, was the largest rat I had ever seen, at nearly the size of an adult golden retriever. The others looked at me with concern, likely thinking I was some sort of madman, so I drew a deep breath to get a hold of myself.

“That scared the shit out of me,” I said. “Although, I’m glad it wasn’t a bear or something. I don’t think I ever want to find out how big those are here.” Their looks of confusion reminded me that I hadn’t told them of my origin, but decided that it wasn’t the time to broach that topic. Instead, I simply started walking back toward the room the rats came from, and quickly regretted it.

Before I reached the door, the putrid stench of decay hit my nose. I had to stop myself from retching as I pulled my shirt over my face to try to block some of the smell. It did nothing to help, as it doubled in strength when I entered the room. The source was evident straight away, my eyes landing on two bodies sprawled out in the middle of the floor. I couldn’t hold it in any longer, and violently emptied my stomach from the intensity of the odor. My associates didn’t fare too much better, all three turning green, and the historian taking it a step further and throwing up as well.

To call them bodies may have been too generous. They were the mostly skeletonized, armored remains of what were probably two of the previous dungeoneers. All that remained were a few bits of soft tissue and hair, the rest looking to have been consumed by the rats. It was a truly grisly sight, yet not something entirely new for me. The most horrifying part, however, was that one of the skeletons was no more than four feet tall.

Rage bubbled up within me, and I clenched my hands into tight fits. I slammed one fist into a nearby shelf, causing it to completely shatter. I checked for any damage to myself, but all I saw was a red glow enveloping my arm. In that moment, I didn’t even care that I was using magic; I was pissed.

“Who the fuck brings a child somewhere like this,” I shouted, turning to my party. The historian cowered under my gaze, but the smaller dungeoneer indignantly stood taller.

“Are you a moron?” The accusation gave me pause, breaking my concentration and the spell. “That’s a dwarf! Nobody in their right mind would let a child enter a dungeon, supervised or not,” he retorted. A wave of relief washed over me, glad that child soldiers were not a common thing on Astema.

“That’s… surprisingly progressive,” I said. I received scrutinizing looks, but no further comments. The more I gave it thought, the more sense it made. I guess if homelessness, hunger, and poverty have been dealt with, it stands to reason that disabilities would be viewed differently here as well, I thought. I took a moment to recover from the emotional whiplash I had just experienced before looking around the rest of the room.

It appeared that we were in some sort of administrative office, filled only by a desk, a handful of chairs, and a bunch of shelving. In the back of the room, I spotted another door and cautiously approached it. After a moment of listening for any sounds on the other side, I couldn’t hear anything aside from my own breathing, so I slowly pulled the door open. Nothing came running out, and we continued on our way deeper.

The office had given way to what looked to be the remnants of an armory of sorts. It had been abandoned long ago, evident from the rusted heaps of scrap that once could have been called armor and weapons. Swords were full of holes, toothpick thin in places, helmets resembling more of a mesh than plate, crumbling to dust at the slightest touch. The room was massive, probably having supplied the entire bunker’s – as I decided to deem them – residents. Several more hallways branched off from the armory, and we followed the largest one out.

All rhyme or reason in the design of the tunnels evaporated as we pressed on. Straight corridors turned into twisting, intersecting, paths as the bunker adopted a more cave-like appearance. Narrow hallways started to morph into open caverns, and the dim light started to taper off even more. It wasn’t long before we reached complete darkness, and I stopped our party to formulate a plan.

“Alright, we’re going to get lost if we don’t take a moment to think about this,” I began. “I wasn’t expecting to encounter a cave system here. And I don’t like the fact that we’ve only found two bodies so far. That makes me think we’ve just been lucky so far.”

“Is this your first time in a dungeon,” asked the larger of the two tagalongs.

“That obvious, huh? Look, I didn’t want to have to mention this, but I’m not from Astema,” I admitted. “We don’t have magic or monsters where I’m from, and a dungeon is just an antiquated term for a prison.” The smaller man got visibly angry, probably because nobody would have followed me down here if they knew that, but they were the ones to invite themselves. I could hardly spare any sympathy for that. He was about to speak, but the historian interrupted him.

“We are not in a mere prison, Zachary. Centuries ago, the war against the brimspawn spanned multiple territories. They were eventually pushed back, but the devastation they left behind was immense. Many cities were abandoned due to their destruction,” Irayim explained. “Most of their peoples’ possessions were left behind, including enchanted items. In areas where these items sit, the stagnant magical energy they emit is corrupted by monsters over time. We have only been through the ruins, and we are about to enter the labyrinth carved out by the disruption of those energies.”

I sat for a while as I processed what I had just been told. Despite how empty the dungeon had been, my nerves had been wearing thin, and we apparently had yet to get to anything actually dangerous. I definitely would have classified those rats as monsters, but that didn’t mean Astema’s natives would share that sentiment.

“Will there be monsters in the maze,” I asked. Fighting in the dark wasn’t an option I wanted to take, but if we lit up the tunnels, it would draw unwanted attention.

“No, but there will most likely be traps,” Irayim replied.

“Okay, then. In that case, I have a plan. Are any of you able to use light magic,” I asked the group. All I got in return was the shaking of their heads. “That’s fine, I have something that can provide some light. It’s kind of like an enchanted item, but the charge is very limited, so we have to try to be fast.” I took off my backpack and unzipped the main pouch while I laid out my plan. When I reached in for my phone to use its flashlight, my hand brushed up against something much more useful.

“Never mind, new plan,” I said as I pulled my IR binoculars from my bag. “These will let me see in the dark. They’ll only work for me, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll be able to see the traps, and we aren’t going to navigate the labyrinth using our eyes anyway.” That unanimously earned me skeptical expressions, but their doubt wouldn’t change how effective my proposed strategy was going to be.

“I’ll be in front, trying to clear out any traps I can detect, and you guys will be behind me, with your hand placed on the left wall. We are going to take every single turn that the wall does, even if it leads into a dead end,” I said. That got me a couple of raised eyebrows. “It will take longer to get through that way, but it guarantees we can’t get lost, hence why you won’t need to see.”

“Impressive, considering you’ve never been in a dungeon before,” said the larger dungeoneer.

“Yeah, well, not having dungeons doesn’t mean we don’t have mazes. And it’s a proven solution,” I responded. “Now, shall we go?” All three men nodded, and I approached the darkness, bringing the binoculars to my eyes and turning off the magnification. The picture was a bit lacking in detail, but there was enough contrast to make out where I was going. With my party in tow, I stepped into the darkness of the labyrinth.