Chapter 09 of Wayward Ranger by J Scott Miles

After forming their party and ensuring he was ready, Elease touched the dungeon’s door handle again. She nodded as if answering the prompt asking if they wanted to enter, then another notice popped into Aidan’s field of view.

Dungeon Quest: Green Hollow Raiders.

Riches and renown await those who risk it all in Green Hollow’s depths. Will you and your party heed the hollow’s call to adventure? Will you take up the quest and succeed where others have fallen short?

Refusal Penalty: None.

Completion: Find your way to the Glade King’s sanctum and defeat him. Reward: Variable.

Partial Completion or Failure: Reward: None. Penalty: Experience and upgrade-point reduction - Moderate.

The dungeon quest notification surprised Aidan. He’d figured the prompt asking if they wanted to enter would be all there was to it. But I guess the gods, or whoever’s in charge of dungeons, want to make sure we really want to enter.

“All right, here we go,” Elease said. “It doesn’t look like this is a dungeon that we can back out of once we’ve started. At least not without a penalty. So, let’s make the most of it and hope the rewards are worth it.”

Green Hollow Raiders Quest accepted. Best of luck adventurers. Choose your path wisely. Your survival may depend on it.

When she accepted the invitation to enter, the iron-bound door in front of them popped open with a soft puff of air, like the dungeon itself gasped. The expelled air smelled dank and stale, as one might expect from the interior of a dungeon. At least it doesn’t smell like death or rotting corpses. That would be a really bad sign.

The shifting blue and green light filtering in through the waterfall illuminated the first dozen or so feet of the dungeon’s interior. Beyond the door, a corridor stretched away, angling slightly downward, deeper into the hillside.

The interior didn’t look the way he’d expected. He thought it might resemble the cave the green dragon hoard was in, with naturally jagged walls. But what he could see of the corridor reminded him more of a stone castle keep interior, with walls and ceiling of well-fitted cut stone, instead of roughhewn rock.

Elise held out her hand, worked her illumination spell, and brought her ball of light into existence. The small orb rose from her palm until it hovered just below the arched stone ceiling.

Once all three of them were inside the corridor, the door swung shut behind them of its own accord. With the filtered light from the waterfall cut off, they would have been dropped into complete darkness if not for Elease’s illumination orb. I’m going to have to keep an eye out on the upgrade-market for a spell like that. It seems like a spell worth having. We’d certainly be screwed right now without it.

That reminded him to take a second to quickly glance at his status sheet.

Aidan Atchison: Human Male.

Age: 19

Class: Ranger — Level 10

Experience: 12,686

Party: Elease’s Wayward Rangers

Quests:

* Untamed Lands Fledgling quest: Stage 1

Spells:

* Internal Warmth, 1

* Minor Heal, 1

Abilities:

* Taste Hazard, 1

Skills:

* Animal Harvesting, 55

* Camp Cooking, 30

* Evasion, 15

* Improvised Weapons, 2

* Fire Making, 25

* First Aid, 65

* Foraging, 90

* Herbalism, 10

* Snares & Traps, 10

* Stalking, 25

* Ranged – Bow, 55

* Polearms – Spears, 2

* Short Blades – Knife, 10

Boons and Blessings:

* Nanaya’s Kiss

Most of his information hadn’t changed, although he still grinned when he saw the two points beside his polearms skill. The part he was really interested in was the party section, though. All the information he’d been shown before accepting the invitation about the party’s structure and hierarchy was available if he mentally went a level deeper, but he moved past that to look at the information provided for his new party members.

He couldn’t see Elease’s entire sheet, but he was given a very abbreviated look at her basic information.

Eleaslane Emeraldbow Roundtree: Half-elf female.

Age: 33

Class: Ranger — Level 23

A couple of things surprised him about the limited information. Elease isn’t that much older than me. Or as high a level as I was expecting. The way she talks, she makes it sound like she’s a level one hundred and a thousand years old.

“You’re only thirty-three?” he asked.

Elease looked back at him with a frown that was accentuated by the heavy shadows cast from their single small light source. “This is so not the time.” She hissed.

“Yeah, I know, but you made it sound—”

“Not now!” She hissed again.

Aidan frowned back at her, but didn’t press the issue further.

He could also see Tarna’s basic information, which he hadn’t been sure he’d be able to with her status as Elease’s familiar. But it appeared she was indeed considered a member of the party.

Tarna: Gray Wolf.

Age: 7

Class: Ranger Familiar — Level 16

If Tarna was considered a member of the party, he wondered if that meant she would get a full share of the experience and loot. He figured she deserved her share of the experience for sure, and even though he realized her share of the loot would basically go to Elease, he was fine with that as well.

As long as they all came out of the other side of the dungeon alive, more experienced, and richer, he’d be happy.

The corridor continued angling downward as they walked with Tarna out in front and Aidan with his spear in the middle. Surprisingly, the stones underfoot, although cold, weren’t slimy or wet the way Aidan expected they might be with their proximity to the waterfall and pond.

With the crash of the waterfall sealed out by the dungeon’s main door, their footfalls and the soft rustling of their clothes were the only sounds, and the deeper they went, the more foreboding the silence felt.

After several minutes of walking in a roughly straight line that angled downward by a few degrees, they found themselves at another door, although this one was half open.

Tarna’s ears swiveled, and she sniffed. Then she cautiously poked her head into the room beyond the doorway as Elease maneuvered her glowing orb through the opening as well.

When Tarna moved forward, Aidan and Elease followed. They found themselves in a small circular chamber with a domed roof and three doors, in addition to the one they’d come through, leading away.

One of the solid wood doors, the door to their left, was carved in high-relief, from top to bottom with flowers of a type Aidan was not familiar. The dim light from Elease’s orb and the deep shadows it cast only served to give the carvings even more depth and contrast. It’s actually quite beautiful and looks skillfully done. Whoever this Glade King is, he’s got talented craftsmen. Let’s hope that means good loot.

The door directly across from them was mostly just smooth, unadorned vertical planks, except for the bottom quarter, where a hodgepodge of shapes was carved. What the shapes were supposed to depict was difficult to tell. There were what appeared to be sticks, possibly crumpled leaves, and even a few distorted flowers thrown into the mix, all jumbled on top of one another. The whole thing just looks like a mess.

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The third door, the one to their right, was again beautifully carved from top to bottom. Its carvings were of leaf covered stalks, with small unopened buds sprinkled in seemingly at random.

When Aidan turned to look at the door they’d come through, he found the side of it facing the room, also covered in carvings. Small ovals roughly the size of his fist dotted the surface. It almost makes me think it was supposed to depict river stones on a beach.

“It looks like we have a choice to make,” Elease said, walking around the room to look at each door. “Where should we start?”

Aidan shrugged as he too, took a closer look at each door.

“Well, I don’t see any clear indication of which one we’re supposed to start with. So, it might not matter.” She said. “The flowers look nice, though. They’re certainly more appealing than whatever that pile of garbage is supposed to be carved over there into the bottom of that other door.” She turned to him. “Flower door?”

Aidan didn’t have any better ideas, but something tickled at the back of his mind. The quest prompt said to choose our path wisely.

He turned, looking at the doors of the circular anteroom again.

Elease said the door across from us looks like garbage. And I agree it looks like a bunch of dead plants. But if that’s representing dead plants, then what if the ovals on the door we just came through aren’t pebbles but seeds?

“Wait.” He said.

Elease and Tarna both looked at him.

“What? You don’t like flowers?” she asked.

“No, flowers are fine,” he replied. “But I think there is an indication of the order we’re supposed to go in.” He pointed to the back of the door they’d just come through. “Those look like seeds.” He turned to the door on the right. “Then that door has growing stalks with buds, but no flowers. Then on that door we have flowers. And finally, across the way, a pile of what looks like garbage, like you said. Or that garbage could be dead stalks and flowers. I think it’s a life cycle.”

Elease and Tarna both turned their heads to give the doors another look.

“Wow, I think he might actually be onto something.” Elease nodded, then she rubbed Tarna between the ears. “Maybe you were right. Maybe it wasn’t a terrible idea to bring him along instead of leaving him to his fate back at that panther pond. Who knows what kind of trap he might have just kept us from triggering?”

“Gee thanks.” Aidan said dryly. “I’m glad I might have just earned my place in the party. Not like I didn’t already fight a dragon with you, and kobolds, and provide meat for the entire group for the last few days, and—”

“Yeah yeah yeah, quit your bellyaching. We all know the story.” She said with a thin smile. “What I’m saying is that you’ve actually turned out to be a mildly helpful, and not completely unpleasant, travel companion.”

“Mildly helpful?” Aidan asked, but he couldn’t suppress a smile of his own. “That’s all I get? Mildly helpful, and not completely unpleasant?”

“I don’t know,” Elease shrugged. “I think that’s a pretty big step up from an annoying noob who doesn’t know a juvenile panther from a Shadow-spawn Smilodon.”

“A what?”

“See, that’s my point.” She replied as she lightly punched his shoulder on her way around him to the door with the stalks, leaves, and buds. “Come on, let’s go see if you’re right about this whole life-cycle carved on the doors thing. How about you go first, just in case you’re not, though?”

When Aidan turned to look at her, she was still grinning.

“I’m kidding.” She said. “We’ll go in the same order as before. It’s best if Tarna goes first. We can’t have you accidentally springing a trap this early in our dungeon run.”

As Tarna walked over to the door, Aidan’s apprehension grew. He stepped up beside the wolf with his spear at the ready and placed his freehand onto the vine covered door. There was no discernible handle, nor were there any hinges visible, so he wasn’t completely sure in which direction the door might open. He half expected to get another prompt or message when he touched it, but nothing appeared.

Pressing gently on the carved surface, he felt it move beneath his fingertips with surprisingly little pressure. As soon as it began moving, he stepped back, but the door continued to swing smoothly inward without a sound.

A thick, rich, earthy smell like a freshly plowed field wafted through the opening on a pleasantly warm air-current. No sooner had the warm air enveloped them than a honeybee-sized firefly wandered through the gap.

Aidan tensed, unsure if the abnormally large bug was the first of the dungeon’s hostile monsters that they’d have to face. The pea-sized firefly continued its lazy, haphazard flight into the room, but it made no move toward them and showed no indication it meant them harm, or that it had even noticed them, for that matter.

That first oversized firefly was soon followed by a second, then a third and a fourth. Before long, a small swarm of the lazy bugs was hovering near the domed ceiling of the circular anteroom.

Aidan was so transfixed watching the slowly blinking bugs and the warm amber glow they cast, that he forgot for a moment all about the opening door. When he looked back down, he saw the next room was filled with the flying insects as well. Gods, there have to be thousands of them in there. I’ve never seen fireflies this large or in this quantity.

“They don’t seem hostile.” Elease said.

“No.” Aidan agreed.

“And there are so many of them, I don’t think we’ll need my orb for light,” she continued. “So, there’s no use wasting my mana.”

When she let her glowing orb wink out, the reduction in illumination was noticeable, but the sheer volume of large fireflies definitely provided enough dim light for them to see by. Tarna moved cautiously forward into the next room and Aidan followed close on her heels, with his head on a swivel looking for threats.

The next room looked nothing at all like the circular anteroom with all the doors, nor like the corridor they’d followed down from the waterfall. Once through the doorway, they left the barren castle-keep interior decor behind. The only thing that remained bearing any resemblance to the room they were leaving was the cut stone floor, and even that was only visible in a rough, narrow path running away from them down the center of the next room. If it’s a room at all. It doesn’t really look like a room.

Grass and dirt encroached onto the stone floor path from either side, leaving only a few tiles width exposed in places, and far less than that in others. The walls on either side, if there were walls, were hidden behind a thick tangle of trees, vines, branches, and leaves. Likewise, above them, where a ceiling should have been, the limbs from the trees on either side converged to form an impenetrable canopy four or five feet overhead.

Thousands more of the abnormally large fireflies twinkled and blinked amongst the branches as they flew lazy, abstract patterns. If I didn’t know we were underground, I would swear we were on an overgrown path in the middle of a dense forest at night. Well, except for the broken path of cut stones and the lack of any sounds that I would normally associate with a forest.

“How can these plants live underground like this?” Aidan wondered aloud.

Elease snorted. “Dungeons don’t have to play by the rules of nature, or any other laws, for that matter. The gods created these places to test mortals and to entertain themselves. Keep sharp, we’re bound to find out what trials await us in this dungeon soon enough.”

They pressed on, and the deeper they went, the more fireflies crowded the branches above them. But they still haven’t seen anything hostile.

No sooner had he noted the lack of threats than he felt the stone tile beneath his foot depress slightly. “Trap!” He yelled and threw himself forward toward Tarna.

Behind him, several spits of air, like the reports from blowguns sounded from within the surrounding trees and the whiz of flying objects cut through the still air right where he’d been standing. One of the low-flying fireflies was unlucky enough to take a tiny dart right through its bulbous body and it fell to the stone floor with a soft thud.

Aidan picked himself up. Shit, that was way too close. If it wasn’t for my enhanced lynx movement speed, I never would have been able to get out of the way fast enough.

Careful not to trigger anything else, he bent down and looked at the tiny dart skewering the now dark and lifeless firefly. The dart’s tip glistened in the dim light, but Aidan wasn’t sure if the shine was from bug guts the dart had collected on its way through the unfortunate creature, or from a liquid poison. He was betting on some kind of poison, and he definitely didn’t want to find out how strong it was.

“Did any of them get you?” Elease asked from where she’d stopped several feet behind him, outside the darts line of fire.

“No. At least I don’t think so. I didn’t feel anything hit me.”

“You didn’t hear a word I said about traps, did you?” Elease said with a shake of her head.

Aidan opened his mouth to defend himself, but she stifled him with a gesture.

“Let’s keep going,” she said. “But let’s put a little more distance between us. That way, if one of us triggers another trap,” she pointed at him. “It will be less likely to catch all of us.”

They hadn’t gone much further when Tarna’s ears perked up and a moment later Aidan heard the distinct buzz of insect wings getting louder. His first thought was that something was different about the fireflies, but the near constant drone of their tiny wings hadn’t changed since they’d appeared, and nothing looked different about the ones flying over them.

His second thought was that he, or one of the others, had triggered another trap. He froze in place, as did Tarna and Elease.

“It wasn’t me this time.” He whispered.

“That isn’t another trap.” Elease said. “Get ready, something’s coming.”

It turned out there was a swarm of somethings coming. A dozen small humanoid sprites no taller than Aidan’s hand was long, flew toward them on a blur of dragonfly like wings. Each of their little green bodies shimmered in the firefly light, and their glowing oversized eyes gave them an unsettling look. The tiny metal weapons the front eight carried didn’t help soften their looks any, either.

As the front eight darted in to make their first attack run on Tarna, the trailing four drew up to hover in place at a safe distance. Glowing balls of swirling green energy began collecting between the outstretched hands of the back four as soon as they stopped, then when the balls were about the size of a child’s glass marble, they hurled them at the wolf.

Tarna yelped as the little balls of magic struck her almost in unison, but it didn’t keep her from snapping one of the front eight attackers right out of the air with her jaws.

Aidan received a kill notification despite not actually taking part in the kill. And there’s one of the major benefits of being in a party.

Kill: Fiendish Woodland Sprite, level 7. Experience 15. Non-harvestable corpse. Loot-drop none.

Elease’s bow twanged from behind Aidan and one of the magic wielding sprites took an arrow through its abdomen that basically cut the little humanoid creature in half.

As Aidan received another kill notification, he lunged forward with his spear. The sprites made for small targets, but he managed to deal the one he’d been aiming at a glancing blow that still sliced the arm and both wings from one side of its little body. The sprite he’d wounded spiraled to the ground, while Tarna tore another from the sky and Elease split a second of the magic users in half with another arrow.

Aidan thrust again at the flying pests and put his spear point right through one. I think I’m actually getting the hang of wielding this spear. I hope that feeling translates into another skill-point soon. Although if these things get much closer, I’m might have to switch to my knife. I see now how the superior reach of this spear could be a hindrance in tight confines like this.

The entire swarm of sprites focused their attacks on Tarna as if she were the party’s tank, which Aidan supposed she was, in the absence of a larger, more capable party member to fill that role. The tiny weapons the front eight sprites wielded drew blood from numerous gashes around the wolf’s muzzle, and she took a few more balls of magical energy, but she continued to growl and gnash at their attackers.

As the sprites died around them, the fireflies continued to fly in lazy circles and blink as if there wasn’t a battle going on right below them.

Before long, all the sprites were dead, even the one Aidan had severely wounded with his first attack. He ended up earning a total of just under two hundred experience points and eleven upgrade-points for the five level-seven and seven level-eight sprites the party killed. That doesn’t seem like much for all of those, but I assume that’s because we’re all splitting the experience between us. I guess that’s the downside of gaining experience as a party.

Tarna didn’t look too worse for wear after the fight, but Aidan walked up beside her and cast his Minor Healing spell into her, anyway. When he was done, the wolf nuzzled his hand in thanks.

Elease came up behind them with a wide grin. “Alright. That was a nice little warm-up. Everybody’s good?” When Tarna huffed and Aidan nodded, Elease continued, “good, then what do you two say we see what else this dungeon has to offer?”