Jungle Rocks Dungeon, foot of Mount Gursway, 18th day of Sol, 1661

Aunty Bess stood at the entrance to the last room of the Dungeon’s first level.

The wave of fire rolled out over the whole room and an abbreviated scream sounded out.

After a moment, Fancy said to Aunt Bess, “Jessica is confident that the second Delver will die, but it looks like the mage will survive. He’s dropping down the access shaft now.”

“Right, let’s advance, then.”

Fancy shuddered as she saw this strange relative of Jessica walk out over the mud. It wasn’t enough that no mud splashed on her as she walked, nor that no mud even stuck to her boots. No, this Aunt Bess was able to walk across the surface of the mud without sinking into the mud at all, not even leaving footprints.

“OK, the mage entered the final tunnel, but has forgotten to take a potion, so they’re health is down, but the fire killed off the leeches, so they’ll not get any worse.”

“Leeches? Nice touch.”

“The giant mosquitoes kept them distracted, so they never realised they were being sucked dry.”

Aunt Bess nodded. “Pretty standard.”

Fancy fluttered along beside her, guiding her over to the opening in the floor that was the access shaft, where she landed. There was a deep rumble that Fancy felt through her feet.

Aarocan Forrestwalker stepped off the edge of the shaft and fell down towards the bottom. He used a spell to catch himself, so he gently touched the floor. He crawled along the shaft for about twenty metres before it changed from horizontal to vertical. He got out a second torch, lit it from the first and dropped it down the shaft, watching the torch flicker as it dropped. He guessed that this one was about a kilometre deep. The torch continued to burn once it reached the bottom, so the hole had air and no water.

He wasn’t specifically annoyed that his two team members had died. Honestly, it just meant that there would be more money for him. Well, there was never going to be any share for them, really. He’d always intended to kill them at the end, after he’d got the three Cores. He was, however, a bit annoyed at them dying so soon. He’d expected them to have a least survived a bit longer, maybe into the third dungeon.

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He cast a detect traps spell and noted that the cap over the shaft probably had something behind it. He cast a reinforce spell to protect himself from anything falling through, cast a spell to minimise his decent rate and allowed himself to fall into this final shaft.

He floated to the bottom of the shaft and found a lever. He grabbed it to pull, when he thought better of it. Before pulling it, he searched and found a second lever, hidden in the floor.

“Ah, sneaky!”, he mumbled. “This should be the final obstacle. Maybe a monster or two in the core room, but this should be it.”

With a smile on his face, he pulled the lever.

This released a dungeon stone column, some one metre in diameter and three metres long, way above the stone cap. It fell some twenty metres before hitting the cap over this shaft. Even with the reinforcing from the mage, it had so much force behind it by now that it blew straight through the cap, ignoring the reinforcement spell, and started falling down the 1000-metre-long shaft. The shaft was only slightly larger than the pillar, so it tapped the side a few times on the way down, slowing it slightly. Even with this, by the time it hit the mage at the bottom of the shaft it was traveling at over 100 metres per second and hit with a force of around 65 million kilograms. This translates to over 200 mph and over 70,000 tons.

“Umm, Jessica is saying she felt no surge from the death of this last Delver after the stone deadweight dropped. They must still be alive?”

Aunt Bess shrugged and jumped down the first shaft. Holding a gloved hand against the wall allowed her to moderate her speed. She crawled along the horizontal passage and stopped at the final drop, glancing up into the hole now visible where the cap was.

“There was just the single deadfall, wasn’t there?”

“Yes, and it has dropped down the shaft.”

“Can Jessica reset it?”

“No, the Delver is too close to it.”

“OK. Ask her to leave it alone until we tell her otherwise.”

“Sure.”

Aunt Bess dropped down this final shaft, again using her gloved hand to slow her down. She landed lightly on the pillar and cast a spell on herself. She was then able to slip down between the pillar and the side of the shaft. There was also enough room for Fancy to follow.

They found the Mage on the floor of the shaft. While still alive, his body was so damaged that he could not move.

Aunt Bess squats down next to the Mage as says, “Well, someone’s been a bad, bad boy.”

Even though most of the Mage’s face was distorted by his injuries, Fancy was shocked to see the brow rise in obvious panic.

Aunt Bess got a set of manacles out of her dimensional bag and attached one ring around the Mage’s neck. “Well, you won’t need your legs, and as they’re stuck under this rock…”

Aunt Bess pulls out a long knife and cut off the mage’s legs. The fire wrapped around the blade cauterised the wound, stopping any additional blood loss.

A sudden noise from the side of the shaft has her spinning around, knife in hand. A hidden door has just opened.

Fancy huffed. “Well, he found the secret lever. The normal lever drops the rock, while the secret, hidden, lever drops the rock.

After a pause, Fancy continued. “Then a minute or so later open this door.”

Aunt Bess laughed and said, “Any more traps?”

“No. We sort of got a bit complacent and figured this would stop him.”

Aunt Bess shock her finger at Fancy and walked down the passageway, dragging the Mage behind her.

“Jess! Looking good! Yellow always suited you.”