Pate Knob was an area of large hills, each of them covered in grass, like upside down bowls beneath a blanket. There were a few trees here and there, but the area was dominated by grass more than anything else. This region of Greater Plenarch had more of a scheme to the names than elsewhere in Inter, which came, in part, from its shorter history relative to the rest of the nation. There was a small town at the center of almost every hex, which typically gave the name to the hex, and if it was relatively flat, it was typically a ‘Point’, as in ‘Hie Point’, while if there were lots of hills, or one hill near the center, it was called ‘Knob’. Alfric had been prepared for Pate Knob to have rockier terrain, as they’d seen in Traeg’s Knob, but it was all grass-covered hills, virtually as far as the eye could see.

“What causes this?” asked Mizuki, looking out over the many hills. They were nearly uniform in shape and size.

“A bit of a haycock shape,” said Hannah.

“Haycock?” asked Mizuki. “You made that up.”

“It’s a word,” frowned Hannah. “It’s a heap of hay in a field, a cone shape.” She made the shape with her hands.

Mizuki narrowed her eyes. “That’s a haystack,” she said.

“There’s soft rock beneath the grass,” said Isra, who was crouched down. “I’m not sure exactly what happened, but it would have been a long, long time ago.” She had a pronounced frown.

“Something upsetting?” asked Alfric.

“No,” said Isra. “I was just wishing that I knew. Or that I could figure it out.”

“What’s a pate, anyway?” asked Mizuki.

“The top of your head,” said Alfric, patting his own. “So whoever saw this thought that they looked like a bunch of heads, I guess.” He took in a deep breath, smelling the summer and the dampness of the grass. “Come on, it’s this way, I think.”

There was a little path between the rounded hills, which went alongside a thin trickle of water. Pate Knob was one of those hexes that rarely got any traffic, and unlike Traeg’s Knob, it didn’t even have a public house next to the warp point. The hills were bad for farming, and no one was hurting all that much for farmland anyhow, so it was a relatively empty hex. Traffic had silently routed itself around the hex, so the roads were even less developed than elsewhere in Greater Plenarch.

The dungeon entrance itself was surprisingly well-kept, though some of that seemed to be from recent maintenance. The door was firm oak, well-varnished, and the stone collar around the door had been cleaned enough that it was pure white, the runes clearly visible. It was all set into the side of one of the hills, deep enough that there was a bit of structure around it, clearly added later, as though at some point the dungeon entrance had been excavated out.

“Everyone ready?” asked Alfric. He got a round of affirmative replies and readied himself, then unlocked the door and slipped inside.

Alfric was praying for an easy dungeon, a gentle dungeon, even one without much in the way of loot. They were all at the same elevation again, and in theory that meant it might be slightly easier just on principle, but he wasn’t about to hold his breath. A handful of useless entads that they could keep as toys or trivial conveniences, that was what he was hoping for, if it meant a dungeon that wouldn’t present mortal threats. A dungeon where Hannah wouldn’t have to do any real work of healing, that was what he was looking for.

The opening room was safe, which was always a relief. It was a limestone cavern approximately twenty feet across, with wet walls and no good dry place to set all the things they didn’t want to be carrying into battle, but after a bit of thought, Alfric drove a few pitons into the soft stone and gave them a place to hang things.

“Why do we keep going into such wet places?” asked Verity. She was fiddling with the pegs on her lute. “It’s murder on the instrument.”

“We’ll find you a better lute,” said Alfric. “If it doesn’t happen organically, we’ll just go buy one. You can play other instruments though, right?”

Verity glared at him. “With a concert on the horizon, I’m not going to be cross training.”

“Fair,” said Alfric. “I was just thinking about options. An instrument that can survive any conditions and still sound good will be, ah, perhaps a bit expensive. If it has to be a lute, even more so.”

“It’s bad enough that I’ll likely be using a different instrument for the concert,” said Verity. “Though the finger flute does make things easier.”

“We should get moving,” said Alfric. “I think everything is squared away here, and we’re prepared for a speedy exit if need be.”

“Lead on,” said Hannah with a nod. She was in her entad full plate, helm down, with a hammer ready to bash things. Alfric envied the armor, and wanted a set for himself. It was the kind of thing that there was little cause for in the real world, which meant that a suit would come relatively cheap, but one that would resize to him would be much more expensive, and getting a suit altered for him would be horrendously expensive.

“Mizuki, what do we have for the aetheric weather?” asked Alfric.

“Fireballs,” said Mizuki with a grin. “I’m going to torch the crud out of whatever we come across. I’ll try not to make it too loud, but no promises.”

“Good,” said Alfric. “Earplugs in then. Make sure you’re not breaking the loot. Verity, maybe put some power on Mizuki, at least at the start of the fight?”

“Will do,” said Verity. She was holding her lute slightly differently than she had in past dungeons, and Alfric wondered whether this was some new form she was trying. He hoped that it would work out for her. She put her earplugs in place, and Alfric did the same. They were waxy lumps he’d read about while in Dondrian, and fairly cheap, though they’d have to use new ones each time.

She struck up a melody that was slow to begin but built over time:

The tempest raged across the sea,

But I had you and you had me,

We held together ‘neath the sail,

And watched the kraken, large and pale.

In the first real room, Alfric caught only a flash of the creature, a large one of hooked limbs and green slime, opening its mouth for a huge roar. Then Mizuki was there beside him, shouting at almost the same moment she sent the projectile speeding toward it. The earplugs, which were firmly in place, were godsent, because they meant less chance of being permanently deafened. When Alfric opened his eyes again, the creature was completely dead, bits of it blasted up against the walls in what seemed like an unnecessary display of power.

said Mizuki.

said Hannah.

Mizuki replied. She had a smile plastered on her face.

The room had four doors, which was a bit unusual, with two of them on the ground level, and the other two reachable by climbing up stairs to a balcony. It was dark, lit only by their lanterns, and Alfric spent some time thinking about the doors. There didn’t seem to be anything in the way of valuables, and Mizuki would have called any magic out.

asked Mizuki.

said Alfric. It was very much a question of preference, but Alfric was in a low-risk mood, especially given that he didn’t want to be time sick if this dungeon didn’t pan out. He gave a brief pause to allow for dissenting opinion, then moved to the left door.

Mizuki was muttering ‘fireballs fireballs fireballs’ under her breath.

The door opened up into stairs that led down, treacherous stairs that weren’t quite right for a normal human stride length, and weren’t quite level. It was, again, dark, and Alfric gave out a word of warning so that people would watch their step. Alfric found it curious that this was relatively civilized, given how little settlement the hex had, but it was the kind of curiosity that a dungeon always presented. Perhaps Pate Knob had a long history and some long-forgotten ruins buried under brush.

At the base of the stairs, there were furry creatures with long ears that trailed onto the ground behind them, and if not for the muck they were moving around in, they would have been white.

There wasn’t even a fight to be had, since the first step was too high for them. They tried to jump up, and were screeching, but they had only tiny little claws, and two sharp front teeth, and they couldn’t make it to Alfric. Alfric leaned down and picked one up by the scruff of its neck to look at it.

he said. There were twelve in all, which was a good starting population.

said Isra.

said Alfric.

A short time later, all of the furry critters had been lifted up with some amount of caution and put into a large sack, which was then tied up tight and put into a wooden cage, which was then placed into the garden stone entad. It was all a definite risk, but there could potentially be quite a bit of upside if the hair was worth anything. Dungeon mad creatures could be bred, so long as they could be settled down, which was usually done by keeping them unaware of people for long enough.

The room itself was cave-like, with thick muck on the ground, and Alfric stepped carefully as he moved to the next door.

said Mizuki. She was looking at the muck, squinting, as she often did, to see the magic better. She reached down into the muck, making a face, and pulled out a bow. The face of disgust she’d been making grew more extreme.

said Alfric.

Mizuki set the bow in a better position.

said Hannah.

The muck-floored room led off down rock tunnels made up of the same soft stone of the central cave. It wasn’t a clean division between room and hallway though, with the tunnels instead being like two extensions of the room that got smaller as they went until eventually they were slits that were difficult for a fully armored person to slip through.

The leftward passage opened up into a small chamber with a pile of rocks in the center of it. Alfric initially worried that they might be eggs, or some kind of sleeping creature, which might have been a problem given the narrowness of the passage and how many there seemed to be, but they were just rocks. A quick look from Mizuki was enough to confirm that they were ectad material, capable of making good dehydrators, and Alfric was able to gather them up without too much work.

The rightward passage got overly narrow, just as the leftward one did, but then the ceiling began to gradually lower, and Alfric was forced to back out lest he get stuck. More than one dungeoneer had unintentionally trapped themself in a narrow passage, thinking that it would open up, or that they would be able to come back the way they came. There was a story, often shared around campfires in the Junior League, of a man who had wriggled himself into a tight passage, only to have his party members be unable to extricate him. They had stayed in the dungeon for three days trying to free him, and had eventually left him there, having no better options.

The party back-tracked, taking the bow with them and spending a moment to secure it with their other things back in the entryway.

said Mizuki.

said Alfric. It would be wrong to say they were ‘due’, but right to keep in mind that major combat was very possible, and that they couldn’t be lulled into complacency.

Again there were stairs descending down, and these had a slight slant to them, making them especially treacherous, which meant that Alfric needed to take his time and ensure that the others were doing so as well. It was, again, dark, which was a bit of a theme for the dungeon thus far, and gave it a greater sense of danger than it would otherwise have had.

When they reached the bottom, they found themselves in a cavernous room, one with stalactites and stalagmites that were accompanied with a steady drip of water from the ceiling. There were monsters as well, but they were already dead.

said Mizuki as she peered at them.

said Alfric.

The monsters were long, with skinny, emaciated limbs and a thick pelt around them. Alfric didn’t want to spend a lot of time looking at them, but Hannah stopped for a moment to touch one of them.

said Hannah, which meant that she must have been using her clerical power of diagnosis.

Mizuki was sweeping the room for magic items, and eventually reached down to one of the corpses to pull up a sack that had been slung over what you’d have to be generous to consider a shoulder. she said, pulling out a thin piece of metal.

said Alfric.

said Mizuki.

Between the stalagmites was a passageway that led deeper into the dungeon, and for a moment, Alfric wondered whether it might connect up to the other passageway that had been too narrow for him.

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Instead, it led to a wide open room with a flat floor but more stalactites hanging down from above. In the center there was a chest with clawed feet, and as Alfric began to cautiously approach it, it lunged toward him.

he yelled as he saw Mizuki’s hands come up.

There were, within dungeons, creatures that disguised themselves as trinkets or furniture or other things. They’d come across monsters like that in their very first dungeon, in fact, a collection of flying creatures that looked just like books before they’d gone flapping through the air to attack.

But there were also other ways that something like a chest could move at a person, and they were too valuable to risk lobbing a fireball at.

The chest came to a halt in front of Alfric, clawed feet moving with eerie realism as they brought it to a stop. It was a large, heavy thing, solid oak construction with thick pieces of wood, and metal panels at the side and also on top. There was beauty and artistry to the construction, detail on the dovetails and raised scenes on the panels, which were all different from each other and seemed to be made of tin.

said Verity, who’d come forward and was pointing at the design.

asked Mizuki.

said Alfric.

asked Isra.

said Alfric. He leaned down and gave the chest a tentative touch. It didn’t move from where it was. He reached forward and slowly lifted the lid of the chest, then peered down inside.

said Mizuki, who had stepped forward.

The interior of the chest went down only a few inches, and Mizuki was right, that was suspect, and implied a false bottom or other compartments, or something. Alfric reached forward and pressed on the bottom, and was slightly relieved to find that he could push it down with some ease.

he said. He looked around, and the room seemed to have no exits, so he went back the way he came, glancing back to see what the chest was doing. As soon as the last person got more than five feet away from it, it followed along, this time at a bit of a jaunty trot.

said Mizuki.

said Alfric.

They went back to the room with four doors, this time aiming at the top two. They’d covered a number of rooms already, and had a few things that were technically encounters, but Alfric hadn’t gotten his bident bloody yet, and it was setting him on edge. It would be a good dungeon if he didn’t have to kill anything, but a dungeon where Mizuki was the only one doing any work would feel a bit hollow.

The top two doors, as it turned out, connected to the same place. It was too wide to be a hallway, with walls of the same white stone, but for a room, it was incredibly long, so much so that they couldn’t see the end of it. The lanterns were good, but there were limits to illumination, and one of the problems with coming into a dark place with a light was that it had a tendency to attract monsters in short order. They heard it before they saw it, and Mizuki called out a shout of warning that her fireball was on its way.

The creature was large, built with an oversized mouth with hundreds of tiny teeth. It thundered forward on all fours — no, on all sixes — fists slamming on the ground as it covered distance in a hurry. It opened its mouth for a huge roar, and that was right where Mizuki aimed the fireball.

Afterward, she would claim that the creature had closed its mouth around the fireball and had a brief, confused expression before being blown apart. This was hard to argue with, given that everyone else was following proper protocol and not looking directly at the fireball when it went off. That the monster would stop and attempt to process a fireball in his mouth, that it would have feelings of confusion or worry about the situation, strained credulity. Mizuki insisted though, and seemed to think that it made a good story, and Alfric hadn’t been looking, so it was remotely possible.

Verity had been empowering the spell, and they were hit with a spray of blood and chunks of gore. The aftermath was gruesome, almost comically so, though Alfric kept his opinion on the humor of the situation to himself. Explosions were sometimes tricky things, the force of them acting in unexpected ways, and Alfric had heard cases of even a very serious explosion not doing as much damage as it seemed like it would, since the energy would simply bounce off heavy armor. Here, the creature seemed to have closed its mouth around the fireball just before it unleashed its full force, which had the effect of magnifying the damage. Its face was largely missing, and flesh hung from the shattered jaw. There was no sign of the teeth.

“Ow,” said Mizuki, touching her forehead.

asked Alfric, turning to look at her. They had all been splattered by blood, and Verity was carefully cleaning her lute with a cloth, though she’d been at the back and shielded from the worst of it.

said Mizuki, whose hand was on her forehead.

said Hannah.

asked Mizuki, who patiently stood there as Hannah examined her head.

said Hannah.

replied Mizuki. she belatedly added.

said Alfric.

They took the long room slowly, worried there would be another monster. If it was like the first, it would be trouble, as Mizuki had sucked the air clean of magic, and Alfric didn’t particularly like the larger monsters, which they were relatively weak against.

Eventually they had walked the length of a city block, and still the room kept going. Unfortunately, it was sloped down, and gradually became more sloped as they went. Before it got too steep and there was a risk of slipping, Alfric brought them to a stop. The chest was following, but seemed to have no trouble keeping up, and gave no sign that it was affected by being on an uneven keel. It had navigated the earlier stairs just fine.

he said, looking down at the remainder of the room, which showed no sign of stopping.

said Mizuki.

said Alfric.

said Hannah.

asked Mizuki.

Alfric thought about that.

He got out the gear, moving with all due caution. The ground was slightly wet in places, and he was painfully aware that if he began slipping, he might not be able to recover, especially as the slope of the floor became more extreme. Falls could kill, and even if they didn’t kill, they could maim you enough that you couldn’t get back up. Without as much of a chrononaut safety net, there was a heightened tension, and Alfric found himself enjoying the higher stakes, perhaps in spite of himself.

Proper climbing was better done with a harness of some kind, but Alfric tied a rope around his waist, using knots that he prayed would hold. It wasn’t immediately clear to him which god was the best for knots, but he ended up on Xuphin, God of Infinity.

A hundred feet wasn’t all that much, not in the context of how long the room was. As he moved though, his lantern illuminated an opening on the steep grade.

said Alfric.

He was worried that there would be something in the hole he was descending to, and that he would have to fight it while holding onto the rope or depending upon his knot, but the recess had nothing in it, only another passageway to parts unknown.

said Alfric. He stepped into the entryway and undid the knot. Getting up would be more difficult, but not all that challenging. At the end of the alcove there was another door, and there was just enough space for all of them to cram in together.

A round of assent later and Alfric was pushing through the door, alert to the fact that something on the other side might be trying to kill him.

The lantern illuminated a room with a ring of stones in the center, and hulked over within those stones, a creature the size of a small wagon. Alfric moved slowly, shield ready, but it was still. He wondered whether it was another mastic, but he wasn’t about to drop his guard. When Alfric was at the ring of stones, he stopped, and that was when the creature lunged forward.

Wet fur split open and slimy appendages came forward, which slammed hard against an invisible barrier. The creature roared from a mouth with crooked teeth and lunged again, attempting to break through the barrier, but whatever invisible force was holding it back, the creature couldn’t penetrate.

asked Mizuki.

said Alfric.

said Mizuki.

asked Alfric.

said Mizuki.

said Alfric.

They backed up slowly as the creature smashed against the invisible barrier over and over again. At a certain point it stopped, sniffing around at the stones, and that was when Alfric started to get truly worried. Dungeon madness was a curse, but also sometimes a gift, since it meant that sneaky tactics like ambushes or traps were barely ever used. Every now and then though, there was a creature for whom the dungeon madness meant something else, especially when there was a barrier that couldn’t be overcome with raw force. Something with enough of a brain left to stop smashing a barrier would be smart, and that meant that it would be much more dangerous if it actually did get out.

Isra went up the rope first, sure on her feet, and Verity came after, followed by Hannah. Having to evacuate in this way was something that Alfric had worried about, but he’d pushed those thoughts to the side and declared it an acceptable risk. Now he was second-guessing himself. He’d recognized the stones as something incredibly old, a device that had been built by a civilization who only deployed them for certain dangerous scenarios, and that meant that the creature trapped within those stones —

As Mizuki was going up, her foot slipped on a rock, and that was enough to set her off-balance. When her weight came down on the angled rocks, her grip slipped, and then she was falling down past where Alfric’s lantern light shone.

He would need to go down after her, taking the plunge into the unknown depths. Mizuki had a lantern of her own, but it was only a small one that she kept tucked away most of the time. He couldn’t see her at all.

Alfric said into the party channel. He had almost forgotten his training and the need to keep everyone on the same page.

said Mizuki over the party channel, her voice causing a cool wave of relief though Alfric, because that meant she was still alive. Her voice sounded strangely calm. Below, far below, there was a flash of light so bright that Alfric couldn’t make out whatever it was illuminating. A second flash of yellow-orange light followed the first, and there was a long moment of silence.

asked Alfric.

said Mizuki. Below, so perilously far Alfric wondered how she had survived, Alfric finally saw a light, her little palm lantern. There was a pause, and Alfric could just barely make out the figure below looking up. Mizuki swore.

said Alfric.

asked Mizuki.

asked Hannah.

said Alfric.

asked Mizuki.

Alfric was holding onto the rope and looking up the slope to where the chest is.

The chest was having no problem at all gripping the slope, though by rights it should have been slipping. It seemed to stick close to the closest person, and with Isra, Verity, and Hannah having gone up, and Mizuki having gone down, it was there on the wall next to Alfric, patiently waiting.

The first step was to climb up the rope until he got to the place where he’d pounded in the piton, and the second step was to untie the knot and then wrap the rope around the chest. This took some doing, but with Alfric right next to it, it wasn’t moving at all. It was tempting to anthropomorphize the chest, but entads were never like that, never “alive” in the way that they might sometimes seem to be. The chest seemed patient, but that was just a matter of projection.

Once the rope was tied around the chest, Alfric tried to think about next steps. Getting down to Mizuki would be easy, and easier still with the chest, but getting back up would be more difficult. If Alfric couldn’t get down to Mizuki and bring her back up, the whole day was shot and would need a reset, which would leave him time sick, and was the entire reason not to do a dungeon unless fresh. He was doing his best to keep his head though, and after a quick test, he hoped that he had cobbled together enough plan pieces that something could be done with them.

Alfric lowered himself down the slope with exaggerated care until the chest started to move. Once it did, he held his feet, allowing it to close the distance between them, paying attention to how fast it was going.

He did it again, holding onto the rope as he went further down the grade, but this time, as the chest approached, Alfric backed up more, keeping the rope taut. The chest followed at a fairly sedate pace, and then they were off, the chest supporting him and also following behind him.

As they got to a steeper part, Alfric was eventually left dangling, and the chest seemed to have no problem walking on walls, though it never quite got to a sheer vertical. The distance between them was kept constant, and because of that, the chest continued to direct itself downward, carrying Alfric like a jury-rigged crane.

The slope never actually became vertical, and after a bit, it began to get less steep. Mizuki’s small lantern was some distance away from the wall, so Alfric figured that something like that had happened, and it also helped to explain how she had survived such a high fall. Most of it had been slipping and sliding down rather than full-on falling.

Eventually Alfric reached her, with the chest trailing behind him. The ground was covered in black, brackish water, perhaps a foot deep, and Mizuki was standing by the edge of it with a large sword in one hand and a helm in the other. Behind her, illuminated by Alfric’s lantern, was a huge humanoid creature whose body still had places where there were glowing embers.

she said.

She looked in rough shape. Her chestplate was dented, and she was bleeding from one leg, but it was hard to tell anything else about her, because she was also covered in muck, presumably from the slime. She was smiling, but looked awfully tired, as though she’d stayed up too late or done too much heavy labor.

said Mizuki. She gestured at the creature she had killed. The sword was big enough that Alfric was surprised she was holding it, but it was an entad, so it was possible that explained it.

said Alfric.

asked Hannah over the party chat.

said Alfric.

It took some time to figure out the logistics of climbing into the chest. While the height wasn’t a problem, the chest wasn’t quite big enough for the two of them to stand up in it side to side. Eventually they squished themselves in, and Alfric pushed them down a bit with his palms flat against the interior sides of the chest, low enough that the lid closed.

“Is this going to work?” asked Mizuki. “What do we do if it doesn’t?” She was barely audible with the earplugs in.

“Reset,” said Alfric. “You’ll help take care of me when I’m time sick, right?”

“Of course,” said Mizuki. She looked at the bottom of the lid, which was lit by their lanterns. “How long do we wait?”

“Not sure,” said Alfric. “In theory we should be moving. I don’t want to open the chest while it’s climbing the side of the wall.”

“Fair,” said Mizuki.

But shortly after that, Hannah opened the lid and looked down on them, and then they went through the hassle of getting out of the chest, which was marginally helped by the chest itself seeming to want to disgorge them.

They were in the main entryway, where their things were hung on hooks, and had gotten there far, far faster than Alfric had expected. They hadn’t tested how fast the chest could go, but it seemed to Alfric that it was much faster than he’d been imagining it to be.

said Hannah when she touched Mizuki.

said Mizuki as she was healed.

<’We should not value them for their works, but for their nature,'> Hannah quoted.

said Mizuki.

said Hannah.

said Alfric.

It wasn’t a full clear, but Alfric contented himself with the spoils they’d gotten. What he’d seen would have to be passed along to the authorities so they could deal with it, but the dungeon had been completed, and the day wouldn’t have to be wasted. He couldn’t say that it was easy, not at all, but then again, dungeons weren’t supposed to be, and for once, Mizuki’s fall aside, it didn’t seem that they’d been thrown anything that was far beyond their capabilities.

He was hopeful that this meant the next dungeon could be much sooner than they’d been in the past, and at the thought, even though he was caked with grime and gore, a smile spread on his lips.