The slanted tunnel beyond the place where the door once stood was lined with evenly spaced blue lights, each of them just bright enough to illuminate the gray stone that lay between them and the next set of lights without being blinding.
It was as convenient as it was suspicious, and Lucas said as much.
“It’s a dungeon, big guy,” Niko replied dryly. “Everything is suspicious. No point in worrying - let’s just pull out torches just in case the lights go out, and keep going.” He conjured a floating ball of fire to emphasize his point as Zen pushed past the both of them.
“This whole place is incredible!” He declared, clearly awestruck. “It must be at least a thousand years old - no, three thousand! And given the variety of magics used here and the archaic forms of both the runes and the architecture, I’d say that’s a conservative estimate!” He was so excited that he didn’t even notice the frantic adventurers desperately gesturing for him to keep his voice down until a cackle echoed throughout the stone halls.
“At long last, we’ve someone to play with,” a high pitched voice rang throughout the passageway. “Come, then! We’ve been waiting for you.” Scraping, scratching sounds began to echo throughout the tunnel as the scholar stumbled away from the wall he’d been inspecting.
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly as Niko and Lucas leveled their best glares at him. “It’s jus -”
“Save the excuses for after the fight,” Niko said firmly, glowering. “Something’s headed our way.”
He was right. In the distance, they could see a handful of pale humanoids with long, gangly limbs emerging from a passageway they couldn’t see from their angle. Some clung to the walls, others walked almost normally, and yet more of the strange things sprinted at them on all fours.
“Ghouls,” Ferris declared, a note of disgust in his voice.
“Fire, acid, and holy,” Lucy declared in an uncharacteristically serious tone, eliciting a nod from her teammates.
“Lucas-” Vivi began, drawing her blade.
The shifter had already extended his claws. “Way ahead of you,” he growled as his form rippled, fangs replacing teeth in an instant. He took a step towards the oncoming monsters -
And immediately leapt back in shock and awe as a wall of flame enveloped the hallway, incinerating the sprinting ghouls in an instant. The bipedal ghouls snarled and hissed, held at bay by the inferno, but their wall crawling allies barely seemed to notice the flames. Instead, they sank into the walls, the stone rippling like water as they drifted past the blaze, unharmed.
Ferris scoffed, laying one hand against the nearest wall and shouting a single word in what team Valorous could only assume was Dwarvish. The ghouls within the ripples screamed as they were forcefully expelled from their magical refuge, landing in the inferno they’d so casually ignored. One leapt out of the flames, surprising the dwarf, but Monika’s blade sliced it cleanly in half with effortless grace.
Focusing his power at the tip of his conjured blade, Jubel took aim at one of the distant ghouls, but before he could strike, a gleaming arrow slammed into his target’s skull. The undead, unconcerned by the normally fatal wound, reached up to pull the shaft free, only to be annihilated in a brilliant rainbow of deadly magical energy as the spell sealed within it detonated.
“We’ll get this group,” Niko said as more ghouls joined those on the far side of the flames. “You guys should make sure we aren’t getting surrounded! Dungeons pull that stunt all the time.”
Sure enough, before the pyromancer could even finish speaking, the sound of grating stone heralded the sudden opening of a secret passage.
A passage that was, naturally, filled to the brim with more ghouls.
Flames enveloped the new arrivals almost instantly, courtesy of Damaia’s flame launcher. Lucas leapt into the fray, his claws cutting down ghouls left and right as the feral undead tried to swarm him.
A claw grazed Vivi’s cheek as a ghouls she’d just slain was replaced by another. Another lunged at her, its claws nearly reaching her throat before an impossibly sharp black blade skewered the monster, sending it toppling back. “You ok?” Jubel asked tensely as he fired a spear of dark energy at yet another undead.
“For now,” she replied as she readied a spell of her own. A familiar incantation poured from her lips as she blasted a bipedal ghouls to pieces seconds before it could wrap its hands around Damaia’s throat. “Is there no end to these things?!”
“No end, no end!” The voice from early echoed over the din of combat. “Not even in death!”
“I would know.”
Vivi froze, the blood draining from her face. That voice had been different. It was… familiar.
Jubel roughly pushed her aside just in time as a ghoul, having seen her stop moving, leapt towards her. Slicing it to ribbons, he turned back towards the elf, who was slowly rising to her feet. Before he could so much say a word, she threw one hand out in his direction, a blast of magic whizzing past him with a roar that left him dazed - which was a big step up from what happened to its intended target. The wall ghoul that’d been hoping to ambush the half elf shuddered as its head exploded, falling limply to the ground.
Damaia scanned the battlefield with a determined glint in her eye. There were still a dozen of the feral undead left, but thankfully, they were almost all gathered around her. Normally, that’d be a problem, but right now….
“HEY!!!”
The scream cut through the sounds of combat, drawing every eye to the felblood, who gave a cheerful smile as she raised one hand to wave at the .
“I’m getting tired of this, so I’m gonna end things now, ok? Bye!” A hissing sound filled the air as several pieces of her armor began to glow cherry red. The ghouls, barely cognizant of the threat they faced, scrambled to tear through her armor.
Damaia’s bright smile never wavered. Three seconds later, a wave of heat and steam filled the corridor as the majority of the remaining ghouls were vaporized by the engineer's explosive deterrent. Niko stared for a second as the charred ghouls crumbled to dust.
Then, he burst out laughing.
Ignoring the last of the ghouls as it tried to leap for his throat, the pyromancer walked over the engineer and clapped her on one still steaming pauldron. “Nice work!” he said with a wide grin of his own. Behind him, Monika sliced the raging ghoul in half.
“Nice work yourself,” the felblood shot back with a wide smile. “I’d never have finished the prototype in time for testing without you!”
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Niko scoffed, waving a hand at the dust that had so recently been a horde of ghouls. “I blew stuff up a few times so you could test stuff out,” he said dismissively. “You’re the one who thought to make steam bombs out of acid!”
“Holy water,” she corrected. “I switched out the acid flasks when I heard what we’d be facing down here. Probably a good thing, too , since I still haven’t finished testing the protective coating. Wouldn’t want to accidentally melt my armor - or any of you, for that matter.”
“Do you suppose you could pat yourselves on the back after the fight is finished next time?” Monika asked in a friendly voice that did not in any way match the glare leveled at her party leader.
“I think I’m in trouble,” Niko stage whispered to Damaia conspiratorially.
“Probably,” she responded in an identical tone. “To be fair, you did just leave her to finish the fight on her own.”
“It was one ghoul, and she’s an absolute badass!” he objected petulantly as the swordswoman lay an uncomfortably firm grip on his shoulder.
“I knew you’d handle it just fine,” he insisted nervously as her gaze burned a hole in the back of his head.
“I’m sure.”
“Really, I had the utmost confidence in your abilities!”
“Naturally.”
“Take notes, Jubel,” Lucas said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “If you ever need to dig your own grave, that is exactly how you do it.”
The scholar cleared his throat awkwardly as the adventurers bickered. “Might we continue this conversation a bit further in?” he suggested delicately. “There’s so much more to do, and-”
“That reminds me,” Niko interrupted, “The fight’s over now.” The pyromancer narrowed his eyes at the suddenly nervous scholar, taking a step towards him with a deceptively friendly smile. “Now you can give your excuses for why you thought it would be a good idea to run ahead of the people you roped into this specifically to act as your protections the second you reached the Dungeon.”
Monika nodded. “I’d like to hear your reasoning as well,” she said calmly, “though if our fearless leader believes he can escape my displeasure by redirecting it to you, he is sorely mistaken.”
“So, anything to say?” Niko very deliberately did not look at the furious swordswoman as he spoke.
“M-my apologies,” the scholar stuttered. “I… took leave of my senses when I saw those obscure runes. B-but I do have good news! I’ve determined the functions of several of the runes, and I m-may even be able to make use of them! Look, I’ll show-”
“No.” Ferris spoke only a single word aloud, the harsh glare he sent towards the scholar more than enough to convey his meaning.
“You’ve triggered enough traps,” Lucy agreed. “In fact - are we continuing or not? This is as good a chance to turn back as we’re likely to get, and after the ghoul parade, I’m not exactly thrilled with this place.”
“No!” the scholar shouted. “Don’t talk about -”
But it was too late. As if in response to what the elf had said, the floor began to tremble. They all turned towards the exit, but it was too late. The door had abruptly reappeared, emerging from the dust in a cacophony of grating stone and a dizzying flash of light and sealing them within the Dungeon.
“So,” Lucas said slowly as the reality of the situation sunk in, “is this normal for Dungeons or…?”
“No, you guys are definitely cursed,” Niko replied dryly, remarkably unconcerned. “But hey, that’s one question answered, yeah? Onwards!” With an enthusiasm that only he seemed able to muster, Niko spun around and marched further into the dungeon.
----------------------------------------
There is, for better or for worse, a sort of preconceived notion in the mind of every new adventurer as to what exactly a Dungeon is. Most imagine deadly traps; ancient poisons for which no modern cure exists coating each of a hundred razor sharp darts, corridors filled with gems enchanted to fill the air with lightning, swinging blades and lethal pitfalls… perhaps a giant monster or three to top things off.
Jubel wasn’t entirely sure what he’d been expecting after the warm welcome they’d received in the first room, but an almost suspiciously safe labyrinth was distinctly not on the list.
The walls were perfectly smooth, other than the small indentations that held the small glowing lights and the lines that marked the places where runes were engraved. It made for an entrancing sight… for the first few minutes. After spending just over an hour wandering the many pathways only to find themselves back where they started, however, the adventurers were officially done with the nearly identical corridors. Something about them seemed almost… contemptuous. It was as if the dungeon itself was mocking them, scornfully laughing at their feeble efforts to move forwards.
Worse, the distant sounds of something scraping against the stone still echoed through the air, a constant reminder that, somewhere in this bizarre maze, there was a monster they hadn’t yet fought, and it sounded a great deal larger than any ghoul.
It made sense, then, that the adventurers were all tense and alert as they attempted once more to find a new way out.
Except that they weren’t - not all of them, in any case.
“20 gold says it’s a Minotaur of some kind,” Jubel said as the scraping sound rang throughout the halls once again.
“Make it 50,” Niko said boldly. “It’s gotta be some sort of demon, remember? I’m gonna say… one of those awful things covered in metal. You know, the ones covered in chains and look perpetually ill?”
“Just call ‘em chain demons,” Lucy said absently. “Nobody really remembers the scholarly name for those things.”
Zen cleared his throat pointedly. “They’re called barbatena and-”
“Fine. Nobody sane remembers the scholarly names for the different kinds of demons. Better?”
“Not remotely,” the scholar muttered.
“Ease up, Lucy,” Niko drawled. “Zen’s weird obsession with old languages might prove pretty useful down here. If nothing else, we need to know what we’re in for, and so far all the instructions have been written in a language so dead I’d bet even those ghouls couldn’t read it. Speaking of dead - your description of this place didn’t exactly sound like a deathtrap. The Trial is meant to test us, right, Z?”
“Everything listed amongst the runes, both inside and out, indicates as much,” the scholar affirmed. “I would suspect that the battle with the ghouls was meant to test our strength, and the monster we keep hearing - assuming it is a monster, and not some sort of ancient machine, a possibility I would dearly love to investigate further - would likely serve a similar purpose. The halls themselves, though, may be a test as well. Perhaps they seek to test our powers of deduction, or our senses? Maybe there’s some magic to it that we must dispel in order to move forwards, or a riddle written some place we have to solve, or -”
“Or we could use that secret passage,” Monika offered, extending one hand towards the tunnel that had unleashed the second wave of ghouls during their earlier battle.
“... Or that,” Zen agreed timidly.
“It’s weird, having to deal with a dungeon that’s more boring than dangerous,” Niko said absentmindedly as he stepped into the tunnel. “I mean, this is almost too easy!”
That was, naturally, when the ground began to shake again.
Dust filled the air as the stone walls around the adventurers crumbled away, dissolving in a matter of seconds. Before the two teams could even begin to form a plan, the walls surrounding them had vanished altogether… and new walls had begun to form.
Lucas snarled in a mixture of rage and surprise as a stolid stone wall sprang into being in between him and Lucy. Monika leapt to Niko’s side, weaving her way through the shifting stone maze with astonishing speed. Zen moved to follow her, only to take a step back just in time as another wall rose up out of the ground with enough force to split a man in half. Damaia tackled Jubel out of the way as a wall descended directly above him like a guillotine blade. As the shuddering stones beneath them slowed and the dust settled, the full extent of the Dungeon’s trap was revealed.
The freshly formed walls had cut Valorous off from their friends - and from the exit.