Estal shifted as they stood outside the burning mushroom door inside the maze. The door looked to be covered in slowly blooming red flowers that attracted butterflies from the jungle above. As she and the Silver Order neared the door, the temperature had slowly begun to rise to an uncomfortable level; given they were already in a hot humid jungle, Estal wasn’t exactly ‘happy’ with this change.
“If I see one more hotspring, I’m out,” she muttered and pushed on the large stone door. The door moved effortlessly and Estal was about to praise her own strength when she saw the door was pulled back by roots and plants.
“We walk into a nexus of power; step lightly,” Silver said from behind her, his mana-speak not helping her nerves one bit. It was like buzzing on her teeth. Inside the door was a semi-large round chamber of sorts covered in a myriad of mushrooms and jungle flowers.
Vines crawled over every inch of the wall and the heat seemed to be rising from below somewhere, as if the soil itself covered a hot vent of sorts.
Estal looked around to the far end of the room where her breath caught. Spreading upwards, like a giant ancient mural, was a painstakingly crafted painting on the bare rocks; the rocky walls smoothed down so as not to distort the image.
Estal subconsciously took a step forward to see the painting lit up by glowing mushrooms and surrounded by trinkets and gifts made by the Pygmies. The black is mixed in with a deep blue dye to form a long skirt, creams and yellows for some noble buttoned up shirt... a selection of colorful hues to make some long ribbon that ran down the front of the shirt.
The woman with the gentle expression had her eyes closed, as if asleep, but still radiating warmth as she clasped her hands. This room was some hidden... beautiful shrine to the woman and the lone figure in the room sat crossed legged before it, a staff across their small lap.
“It’s the same woman as in the Memorial Room... but she isn’t crying here,” Silver said quietly. Estal still didn’t have the urge to go into some creepy memorial room for people that died in this Dungeon, so she’d take Silver’s word for it.
The Pygmy before the painting was much larger than others of its kind, covered in a soft grey robe that shifted when they made to stand and turn to face them. Estal was a wizard, but she knew the feeling of being around people of true faith. This Pygmy radiated that power clearly.
“Those from the outside world,” the Pygmy spoke, startling both Silver and Estal as it spoke in a mixture of puffing spores and mana weaving.
“Why are you here?” the priestly mushroom person asked gravely.
Estal didn’t see the point in beating around the bush. The bushes in this Dungeon were terrifying.
“We want the key that’s in this maze and I chose this door over the other one because it sounded like a metal machine was screaming inside it,” she said bluntly and Silver sucked in air at the tone.
The Priest hummed in what might... be a laugh.
“The Tinker’s room has... it’s oddities. But I see you are not one burdened by doubt,” the Priest mused as it leaned on its staff.
“I’m rude, I get it, but I don’t get why everyone gets so uppity about it. I’m not stabbing people; I’m not cursing them with magic... I just want to get on with things,” Estal said with a sigh as she pondered if this was going to be another ‘test of character’ that made Estal want to strangle her old classmates and/or her father.
“Manners can open many doors,” the priest Pygmy suggested.
“So can a well placed kick,” Estal countered but she decided to change the subject back to the key, lest she be drawn into some philosophical debate. Estal’s philosophy never seemed to make others feel better when they heard it.
“So, do we need to fight... go on a vision quest or...” she waved a hand. The priest just stood there for a moment.
“You suspect that we’re here to stall you?” it asked with amusement clear in its magical tone.
“You’re unique monsters in a maze; if you aren’t here to spin us around or confuse us then I don’t know why you’re here,” Estal said before Silver interjected.
“They might live here,” he pointed out and Estal waved him off.
His points, while valid, were distracting to her social skills. She was wearing this priest person... thing down!
“I’m afraid this room is naught but a space where I go to reflect on my nature. There is no fight here,” the priest said candidly.
“So... you can’t help me with the key?” Estal asked, deflating.
“I never said that,” the Pygmy said back just as easily.
“I was bullied in school where I was sent by my emotionally distant and disappointed father which caused me to develop into a form of magic that kept people at bay... There, I poured my heart out. Can I get the clue?” Estal asked, trying not to sound impatient.
“Child... I’m a Priest, but I don’t take confessions off the sleeve,” the mushroom creature said with an awkward pause. Estal threw her hands up.
“What do you want from me?” she demanded.
The Pygmy gestures to the ground before the painting.
“I just want you to pick out the gift that best represents the great mother,” it said bluntly.
There was another pause as Estal eyed the hundreds of trinkets and gifts.
“What if I choose the wrong gift?” she asked as Silver stared at the piles.
“Then you chose... poorly,” the Priest said with an ominous tone.
Estal and Silver shared a look.
“I hope the boys are having a worse time than us,” she muttered as she looked over wooden swords, clay birds, pots decorated with fish, a bowl of berries, some carriage on four wheels, a plate decorated with the sun and moon, tons of books with covers that Estal wanted to take with her, and on it went.
What sort of gift represented their Dungeon Core?
What was the weirdest and most dysfunctional thing Estal could find?
---
“I bet Estal... is having... fun,” Hazhur wheezed as he and Karn looked around the chamber as green vapors slowly pumped themselves into the room through tiny vents. Above them, on an alcove, a Pygmy covered in smaller boil-like mushrooms watched them search around the room.
“Ten minutes until your lungs make the Mushroom Grove look tame in comparison,” the raspy voice warned. Hazhur looked around the room for the ‘antidote’ the Pygmy promised existed. Bottles upon bottles of liquids lined every space that could hold a bottle. Some bottles were thin and red, others round and blue... some were spiral shaped and slightly off-brown.
There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the placement and Hazhur was getting close to asking for a clue.
Karn went to the first table and picked up a bottle. It was round and he just uncorked it... downing it without any careful examination. There was a pause as he shuddered then fell to his knees, coughing.
Before Hazhur could plead for the test to stop, Karn threw up what looked to be a mess of mushrooms and bile before he perked up.
Hazhur stared at the empty bottle in his hands.
How... why...
“How did you know?” he asked roughly of Karn who just shrugged casually.
“If I was going to die, I could just die faster by doing something rather than slowly and in pain,” he explained.
Hazhur looked around the stone chamber at the remaining thousand or so bottles before he decided that he might as well. He didn’t think Delta would... let such a gruesome trial be held if the answer wasn’t within reach.
He took the bottle next to Karn’s, a goat-horn glass vial that he downed. Karn blinked as he reached his hands to see his fingernails turned a deep shade of blue.
“I think I might have made a mistake,” he said with a frown and Hazhur tried to throw his drink back up, but it was too late; he knelt, also throwing up the mushroom bile before on his bald head, two curled ram horns formed.
“Madam Fera had an excess of ‘Delta Surprise’. They blend well with the antidote,” the Fungalmancer howled in laughter as he slapped his knee.
“I think I look fetching,” Karn said, stretching his hand away to admire the midnight blue nails he now had. Hazhur numbly touched his horns and planned to remove them with his axe if need be before Estal saw him.
“Oh wow.. That was great... thank you, outsiders,” the Fungalmancer said, wiping at his tiny face under the hood as he stood up.
“Just go through this door and you’ll be in the ‘inner’ maze hallways,” he said and at the back of the room, a stone part of the wall slid away to reveal another dark passage.
“Can we get the antidote to the horns?” Hazhur called up desperately.
The Fungalmancer looked down at him and began to retreat into the shadows of the arches with a cackle.
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“If you have the case of the sudden horns... try asking a responsible friend for a bonk!” he said and Hazhur watched him vanish.
Bonk... some kind of Dungeon magic? Maybe inside the maze?
“Do you think if I drink this one it might have an effect?” Karn asked, holding up a curvaceous feminine torso bottle.
Hazhur looked him right in the eyes as he spoke.
“Karn, if you wish to become a woman, on any level, I support you as a teammate and a fellow warrior, however I would say please don’t since you really don’t appreciate what that extra weight will do to your fighting posture,” Hazhur said slowly and clearly. Karn’s smile dropped.
“Talk about dead weight... well, I’m keeping the bottle,” Karn said stubbornly and walked into the passage. Hazhur looked around with a sigh for any bottle that might just get him drunk, but he didn’t see any beer guts or beer shaped glasses sadly.
“This Dungeon is mad, not me. This Dungeon is mad, not me...” he repeated like a mantra as he followed Karn.
---
Estal held up a strange melted object that had nails and what looked to be a half a pot melted into a molten slag sphere.
“Aha!” she declared.
“Oh, that’s not part of the test. The Tinker left it here by accident when he came here to complain about ‘combustion’ and other nonsense,” the Priest spoke up, taking the object before Estal could say anything.
Estal stared with disbelief. That had been her best bet!
She turned to Silver who was just slowly looking over everything with an air of delight. She didn’t know how to read him at all.
“Any ideas?” she finally asked, knowing that he might... have a handle on the Dungeon more than her due to his ‘status’.
“There are objects here that show off ‘parts’ of Delta, but I don’t see a singular object that encompasses her ideals,” Silver said simply and Estal tapped her foot as she looked at him. He finally noticed her staring and looked down.
“Dungeons have an idea, a core concept that everything else is built upon,” he said and Estal blinked, having not known that.
“Why?” she asked curiously.
Silver took a moment to answer as if the information was something he didn’t fully want to share.
“A newborn Dungeon does not mature with time as other living beings do. They only grow as they make progress to their next level. They literally are forming their adulthood with each level. A Dungeon has to cling to something to build that identity upon. Usually it's the common material or monster they end up forming, but it can be something deeper. My... the Dungeon I was formed by was known for its silver halls and monsters. They even had rivers of thin silver that fish and monsters could swim in. A silver mist that could be walked upon... it was beautiful,” Silver whispered, exhaling as if saying the words aloud were painful to recall.
The Pygmy Priest watched him closely and Estal opened her mouth then closed it.
Silver’s existence horrified her, but his emotions... and pain were genuine and she wanted to say something back, share her own pain or comfort him, but she found it difficult.
It was both her own nature as a blunt person and Silver’s nature as a human infected by corruption.
Or... was he a monster using a human as a shell?
Such beings were hunted in many countries due to the chaos they could bring; even the ones where they were ‘tolerated’ they faced much distrust and persecution.
In the end, she just stood there as he gathered himself.
“We are looking for something that is more than mushrooms, cooperation, and trusting. We are looking for something that embodies all of that and more,” he finally said.
“That’s a lot of things for one object to convey,” Estal responded with a heavy sigh. She looked past him and saw something she hadn’t noticed before.
Hanging on the wall by a nail was a key. It was surrounded by pots and pans hanging on similar nails along with vines and roots, making it blend in for a moment. She slowly walked over to it, noticing how it seemed to be of a pale-green stone and had a red gem slotted into its round handle.
“You give someone a key to your home when you trust them, to show they’re always invited... this Dungeon has been nothing but weird and inviting,” she said and paused to think.
“Well, the Catfish was rude, but whatever,” she dismissed and reached out for the key.
“Keys symbolize trust, something to keep safe, and other people!” Estal said, picking up steam as she plucked the key and presented it to the Priest with a triumphant pose.
“Is this your final choice?” the Priest asked softly. Estal’s confidence faltered for a single moment before it raged back with the force of an inferno.
“It is,” she declared.
“Your choice was-” the Priest began before dozens of vines and roots sprang up, forming a thorny cage around Estal that trapped her.
“-poor,” the Pygmy declared.
---
Silver stared in slight fascantion at the scene.
“I’ll strangle you! You sanctimonious little d-” Estal screeched before the cage was fully enclosed, cutting her voice off and fully obscuring her from view.
“You may still choose something in the room that best represents the Great Mother,” the Priest said calmly to Silver, deciding not to take offense to Estal’s muffled screams and curses.
Silver was about to say something when something Estal said came back to him. He slowly nodded, letting his robe shift as he walked forward. He had seen things in the room that came close to Delta.
A collection of dolls that could have been children,a map of the nearby town; Durence, a painting of three large mushroom creatures... and more.
But Silver should have known the answer from the start.
He gently put a finger on the Priest’s head.
“I choose you,” he said and the Priest looked right up at him.
“I am no gift,” it warned.
“You are. All monsters are creations and gifts to the world from their core, Your existence is a gift and you are the embodiment of all her concepts. Fairness, peace, composure, strangeness, and a little bit of misdirection and chaos rolled into one,” he said and the Priest didn’t answer for a few seconds.
“You choose... wisely,” the Priest finally announced and the thorns receded from around Estal where she looked breathless from a long string of curses and perhaps some spellwork to try to set herself free.
The painting of Delta rose up to reveal a hidden corridor.
“This Dungeon will test your limits, like many others, but its goal is not to break you. It is to help you until you can no longer be helped,” the Priest explained as it turned to walk back to its small prayer mat.
“What happens when we can no longer ‘be helped’?” Silver asked as Estal stood at his side, puffing and glaring at the Priest. The little creature sat on its mat with its back turned to them.
Without a word, every root and vine in the room simultaneously produced a thorn that looked to be close to Silver’s hand in length. It was potently clear the floor had not done the same by the will of the Priest.
“You get the point,” the Priest said simply.
“Crystal clear, let’s go,” Estal muttered, quickly moving down the hall. Silver bowed to the Priest before leaving.
The door closed behind them with an ominous thud.
---
The Priest waited until they were gone before shaking its head in disbelief.
“If he wasn’t so sincere, I’d have failed him too,” it muttered, trying not to blush at Silver’s words. It was a gift?
The cheek! It was almost like Silver was flirting! It was a Pygmy of the spores and cloth! It had taken oaths to the great Mother!
50% of the items in the room would be a ‘pass’. Any object that could be linked to the Great Mother’s ideals would be acceptable, it wasn’t the Priest’s fault they had over-thought it and that the girl had picked something that had a flimsy reasoning at best!
The Tinker had warned both the Priest and Fungalmancer people might overthink their tests, but to think it might be right was galling to the Priest...
Not everyone’s room could be a ‘bullet hell’. Whatever that was.
The Priest patted its cheeks at the thought of Silver again. Around her, the dark sensual voice of one of her primal elders let out a romantic jazz tune and the Priest squeaked in embarrassment.
“Lord Maestro! No!” it begged.
It ran into the hidden tunnels to escape the music and to meet up with the others; the entire village had turned out to see the outsiders take on the final ‘test’.
That and more than a few wanted to take part in the last obstacle.
The Hallway of Hornets.