The campfire crackled with a hunger that couldn't be satiated by the scraps thrown in.

A reflection of how life hungers for more.

How strength requires soo much.

Too much for most.

When was enough?

My eyes felt heavy.

My soul made of stone.

Was I close to my own edge?

Would I jump?

Or would I fall?

This raiding expedition

Our whole purpose for being- to change the realm.

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Did we think it would come without a cost?

Without tragedies around every bend?

Within every dungeon or cavern a foe that could kill just as easily as we could, lay for us to slay.

Naivety kills.

I knew that.

What I really needed to know…

What saves?

Our eyes fixated on the flame before us.

Gazing at the blaze.

Wilder sullen, gripping his hands, shivering inches away from the fire.

I had to hold him back on more than one occasion.

The man grew closer and closer to the flame.

As if it would warm his soul.

Brutus was calm like the wind.

One snaps or one grows.

This man had become steel.

You either understand and adapt.

Or shatter.

Like a bastion of stone he stood stoney eyed as we awaited the other parties.

Muller and Shelly's groups had not emerged from their own dungeons.

Still pulsing with a red that denied, their exits were blocked.

What were they fighting?

How many survived?

Within a giant room we waited with a single fire slowly burning.

The air is still.

Only the crackling of the fire breaks the silence.

A silence which deafens and consumes.

Forcing men to look within for the answers one desperately needs.

The physical is nothing but a realm for the metaphysical.

The three dungeons, or halls, would converge into this room.

Directly in front of us, lay a giant door of granite.

A massive construction which resonated and pulsed….nothing.

It gave off no energy.

It did not repel.

It simply stood.

As a door should.

Waiting to be opened.

Engraved with runes of power and of the Old Gods.

Serpents and raven statues lined the entrance with eyes that judged.

As if saying:

Are you worthy...

Do you dare...

Enter the Boss's Chambers???