Learning from the previous tunnel we had our glowstones ready well before the sconces disappeared. We reached a point in the tunnel with large nearly connected stalactites and stalagmites. This was most definitely where the dungeon mages had placed the new guy. The columns of nearly connected stone were mismatched and not in line at all, they weren't even straight, a couple of them leaning at odd angles. As we continued the air began to get thick and damp, it felt like we were walking through a fog bank only the fog was hot.

Before long we could hear dripping and the walls were slick with a slimy goo. Sharing my concerns with Iva I let her know that we might be up against slimes, I assumed that with all the moisture and slimy walls that must be the next enemy. I remembered seeing a party fight one of the giant slimes once a few years ago and since they are immune to all but magic weapons they were wiped out completely. The only way to kill one without magic is to destroy or remove it's crystal heart which dances through its gelatinous body. They are quite dangerous since they can look like a puddle or slip out from holes in the stone It can be quite difficult to find them before they surprise you.

After another few minutes of walking I called a halt to our party of 2. It had gotten even more damp and the smell that now permeated the entire tunnel was starting to make me gag. Fitting an explosive stone to my sling I spun it up, before launching the stone straight down the tunnel. It bounced several times without exploding and finally slid to a halt somewhere beyond our glowstones light. I was seriously beginning to worry, if it was so wet and slimy that the stones didn't go off on impact we were screwed. I dug out my scribe and began working on a time delayed stone so that I could launch it down the hall and hopefully blow up whatever was hiding in the darkness.

Setting the new stone to go off in about twenty seconds I let it fly. When the stone landed it slid several feet before coming to a stop in a puddle, sizzling some before finally exploding. We crouched down huddling under the cloak hoping to avoid getting any of the slime on us when it exploded.

The stone must have had some rare materials in it since the resulting explosion was much larger than I had expected, it rocked the tunnel knocking us off our feet. The roar of pain we heard made me shiver to my core, it echoed down the tunnel as if it came from everywhere all at once.

“We made something very angry” I shouted as the roar continued.

Iva unable to hear me pointed back up the tunnel and we ran as fast as possible with the ground rocking. To our horror the tunnel was collapsing ahead, the stalagmites falling over and … the stalactites too? They were both slowly laying down much like a snake’s fangs when they close their mouth. I groaned as the realization of where we were dawned on me. Those weren’t simple cave ornaments of stone placed by an inept mage and the cave wasn't collapsing, whatever beast I had angered was now closing its mouth with us still inside.

Grabbing Iva’s arm I drew my rusty short sword, once I had her full attention I stabbed it down into the ground with all my might. After watching my blade sink down nearly to the pommel she did the same. These pinpricks in it's tongue must not have bothered it because it didn't make any additional noise.

After fishing an unfinished stone from my pack I quickly scribed another delayed explosion rune on it and sent it flying towards the sinking fang in the hopes that a tooth ache might make it open its mouth again. The blast shattered the stone fang, one small piece landing next to me which was quickly added to my pack. The roar after this explosion was nearly as loud as the first one, the rumbling worsened as well. Unfortunately the mouth started closing even faster.

“Keep blasting its mouth” Iva shouted over the roar.

“It will eventually decide we taste bad and spit us out… I hope.”

Nodding to her I grab a handful of stones and begin throwing them one at a time in the hopes of hitting something hard enough to set them off. Finally, after the 4th one we got our explosion followed by several more in rapid succession. We ducked our heads and held on to the pommels of our swords as the debris began to rain down on us, chunks of stone followed by bone and bits of flesh. The creatures skin was apparently, at least partially made of stone. Some of the pieces of stone had flesh stuck to it as if it had grown that way.

When the dust cleared, there was a hole in the creature’s maw just large enough for us to climb through. Yanking our swords free we sprinted the last few yards to freedom. Iva following after me as I squeezed through the hole while trying to avoid the oozing wound with its jagged shards of shattered bone sticking out.

My clothing and satchel caught wherever a sharp bit protruded as if the creature, even while wounded was trying to keep its meal from escaping its broken maw. We ran down the tunnel, stopping only when we had made it back to the intersection, bent over and breathing heavily with our hands on our knees.

“A list of things to avoid in the future...” I said between gasps for air.

“Stone teeth and squishy wet floors.”

“Noted” Iva replied with a nervous laugh.

“What was that thing anyway?”

“I've never heard of a creature like that, they only taught us to fight beasts and humanoids closer to our size at the training camp.”

“I think it's a cave worm, I remember that Master Bertol acquired some bone fragments from one last year.

“He had explained that they were perfect for making charms and weapon handles because they held a much higher concentration of energy inside them”. Fishing out the tooth shard to get a better look at it I explained a little how runes work.

“Everything in the world has some magical energy in it, you, me, all the plants and animals, the stones of our world...everything.”

“When Runesmen scribe runes into an object it pulls on that magical energy to create the effect described in the rune.”

“Small things like those stones we throw have smaller effects because they have very little magical energy in them.”

“You may have noticed that occasionally they have a much bigger boom than the others, that’s because the stone has other higher quality elements inside which contain more energy.”

I Looked at Iva to make sure she’s wasn’t lost, she nodded still looking interested so I continued.

“Honestly the stones here should not have even half the power they do when they detonate.”

“I believe that’s because this place has been magically altered so much over the last few hundred years.”

“I think the objects here contain much higher amounts of energy then they should.”

“Normally stones of this size outside would only make a small poof of fire and might at most singe your target.”

“Magical beasts have even higher quantities of energy which is why beasts like unicorns and dragons have been hunted to near extinction.”

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“Master Bertol explained to me that cave worms are a minor magical beast.”

“They are extremely dangerous due to their stone skin, as they tunnel beneath the earth they digest the stone and it grows out of their skin as an added layer of protection.”

“They then surface near mountains or stony outcroppings and sit with their mouth open to sleep.”

“Creatures of all kinds come and make the apparent cave their home but after going in too far they find a slope and slide down into the beast's stomach to be digested.”

“Either that was an enormous worm or the dungeon mages didn't place it here correctly since we never found the slope into its stomach.“

“So we were lucky.” Iva said nodding in understanding.

“Yes, had we gone in much further I think we’d be worm food by now.”

“We were doubly lucky to have this land next to my head after the explosion.” I said holding up the chunk of stone I had been examining, I explained what it was to Iva.

“This is the tip of a tooth that got blasted off when the stones exploded.”

“If this worm has been here eating stone for any length of time at all it's probably ten times as potent as a similar piece from a worm outside the dungeon.”

“If I ever have the time to make the proper tools this could become an extremely powerful weapon or charm.”

Beginning to get bored with my lecturing Iva suggested we check the next tunnel and after nodding to her absentmindedly, I followed as she led the way. We went down the middle tunnel this time, it was directly opposite the tunnel we had originally came from and I expected little good from it. While we walked I continued to examine my find, a piece of tooth this large had so many possibilities that it boggles the mind.

If I had proper cutting tools I could carve it up into a dagger, possibly two daggers, a matching pair. If I took the time to study properly I could even make them able to collect energy from the ambient magical energy in the air so it would last much longer. All the best runesmen enchant their objects with a way to generate power over time but that is well beyond my current capabilities.

My thoughts were interrupted about an hour later when I walked into Iva’s back, she had stopped in the hall and was peering ahead when I smacked into her. Grumbling at me under her breath I notice that we’d found a room and she has stopped us before entering. Dropping the tooth back into my sack I quickly took in the room, it was a squat rectangular room with a pedestal in the center and a door set into the stone directly across from us on the far wall.

Not seeing any immediate danger I walked into the room to examine the pedestal. Iva rushed in after me, grabbed my arm and spun me around to face her.

“Idiot! What if there had been traps or hidden monsters?”

“Well I guess I'd either be dead, trapped or invited to dinner.” I replied smiling at her, I didn't see anything that even remotely looked like a trap.

It seemed more like a puzzle than a trap so I figured it was safe. The fact that she was standing there scolding me now was proof that it wasn't dangerous. Then in the middle of the argument we heard a grinding sound and stone slabs slammed down over both the door forward and the passage back. Iva then smacked me upside the head and called me an idiot once again. She followed it up with many more colorful words while she paced like a caged animal. They all revolved around me being an idiot and how bad she had it being stuck with such an idiot for a master.

Ignoring her I got a closer look at the pedestal, it was about chest high and had a rectangular depression like something had been on it at one time but had since been stolen.

“I think some sort of key goes here” I announced interrupting her continuing tirade and halting her pacing.

“We just need to figure out what it is and we can continue” I said, sure that I was on the right track.

“Ooo maybe it's an asshat stand” she announced sarcastically and grabbing my head she pushed it down with a thunk onto the pedestal.

I had been looking closely at the top of the pedestal so it didn't really hurt when my head hit the flat stone. The way she had forced my head down, left me with my head on the stone as if I was trying to listen to it. Unable to move for a moment while she held my head I noticed something in the stone slab where our tunnel had been. Pushing her off of me I went and ran my hands over the wall, it was totally smooth but after looking closely I could see patterns in the stone, it reminded me of wood grain.

Walking the perimeter of the room I examined every wall and to my surprise the entire room seemed to be made of this petrified wood. The patterns changed from time to time but it was all similar just sometimes there were rings and other times the grain went vertical rather than horizontal. It almost looked like…

Rushing back to the pedestal I dug into my bag and pulled out the lock box I had taken from the orc cave. Placing it on the pedestal it was a perfect fit. Taking a step back I stood there, breath held, waiting in anticipation for the doors to open and let us go forward.

After a minute my shoulders slumped and I exhaled the breath I had been holding. Iva started up again this time teasing me. She had gone from angry to sarcasm and was once again pacing the room. I don't know how long I stood next to the pedestal. I spun the block trying it on every side to no avail, the doors just wouldn't open. I was sure that the box was the key but I had no idea how to make it work. Luckily the room wasn't air tight or we would have ended our adventure in that room. Feeling the slab that had closed off our exit we could still feel air from the cracks.

Unable to open the door we ended up sleeping in the room that night. Having given myself a headache trying to figure out how to make the box open the door, I slumped in the corner thoroughly defeated. The room was small enough that a single hot blade, as Iva had started calling them, warmed the room.

After announcing that there would be no snuggling or wet dreams for me she took over the corner in the room opposite the latrine, scooping the sand on the floor into a makeshift bed. We had dug away the sand in one corner of the room down to stone to make our latrine, and we spread sand over the refuse with every use so it didn't stink up the room. I curled up in my own sandy bed a few feet away from Iva and was soon asleep.

We were stuck in the room for two more days before I figured out what I had to do to open the door. The box I had found was a puzzle box, the kind that require sliding the correct panels in the correct order to open. After looking closely to the walls by light stone I noticed that some of the patterns matched the boxes patterns.

I spent the next few hours investigating the rest of the room, sketching the patterns of each wall in my journal. I found that nearly every single wood pattern on the walls had a corresponding pattern on the box. Once I discovered that, it was easy to find the one that didn't match. I began fiddling with the odd pattern and found that if I pushed and slid my thumb in the right direction the whole piece moved.

It took me most of the next day just to figure out the correct pattern that allowed me to open the box. Twice when I moved pieces in the wrong order traps went off. The first was a spear trap, knots in the wood grain pattern suddenly grew into sharp pointed wooden shafts.

Iva screamed which made me flinch, lucky for her when I jumped, I had slid the piece under my thumb back to its original place. She had been pierced in the thigh by one of the spikes as it grew up from the floor. After bandaging her up I began moving the pieces of the puzzle box much slower.

The second trap was actually away out if we wanted to go back the way we had come. Though apparently when we had set off the mechanism that trapped us in here it alerted the local denizens of this level. When the panel that had blocked our retreat started to slide up several goblins had ducked inside before I was able to slam it back into place. Iva made quick work of the ones that made it through and we heaped the bodies over by our compost pile after looting them. For the rest of that day whenever Iva got bored, I would slide that panel blocking the door up and let her kill a few of the waiting goblins.

At one point an orc tried to slip in instead of goblins, too bad for him I was ready and slammed the slab down on him, cutting him in half. It was kind of messy and took quite a bit of the sand to cover up, after that I took one of the goblins stone axes and put a delayed explosive rune on it. The next time Iva was bored we slid up the panel and after activating it she threw the axe under the door and I quickly slammed it back down. After a moment we heard a muffled boom and a little cloud of dust blew in from the cracks around the door.

Sliding the door back up again we were happy to find the tunnel clear of enemies, well whole enemies anyway. There were pieces of them all over the tunnel. They must have been bunched up pretty good when the blast went off. Deciding she didn't feel like picking through the mess we just shut the door and she didn't complain about being bored again.

I finally finished the puzzle around mid afternoon on the 5th day. The panel covering the door slid up and upon placing the finished puzzle box on the pedestal the door clicked open. Out of curiosity I removed the box and the door clicked shut followed by the puzzle resetting itself. After another bout of name calling from Iva I was able to complete the puzzle in about an hour. This time instead of picking up the puzzle we grabbed our things and rushed thru the door.