The questions of dungeons always arise when they do strange things. Are they living creatures? Some say they could be since they do repair themselves after being damaged. Though unlike living creatures you can’t cut of a limb with them, and the only thing you can do to permanently kill a dungeon is to destroy its core. The monsters or denizens of the dungeon can be seen as part of the defense mechanisms to keep parasites out. That does put the adventurers into the role of the parasite, and it might not be a bad analogy.

#Leyvna’s Perspective

After a few moments, the eyes were no longer on her as she walked down the street. She looked at a few of the houses. They were built to last made of stone brick.

“Not what you’d expect in a medieval city. But I guess with long-lived elves they build to last. I wonder where they got all the stone from.”

She knocked on a few of the doors and found that the houses had been abandoned without elves staying behind to fight over for their property, or to defend what was theirs.

She used one of the powers on her staff to weaken some of the buildings along the front-facing walls, and then to also weaken some of the interior wooden beams with one of the lightning skills.

Having finished her job, and with Lauq providing a nice distraction she went back to where she drew her staff and waited.

“Demons Coming!” Irina shouted from the rooftop.

‘At last’ Levyna prepared to cast her spell. She didn’t see anything coming down the roadway yet. So this may have been the false alarm she asked for. She didn’t have a way of keeping track of time, and neither did Irina.

She walked to the center of the road, making sure that everyone saw her. Using her staff she started to cast her first spell. Rocks were swirling around the tip of her staff like an army of boulders, matched by the rocks around the bracers on her arms. Occasionally one of the elemental symbols could be seen moving from the staff to the bracer and back again.

Her movements were slow, as she moved the staff back and forth, but as she moved, every step caused the ground to shudder, slowly building up with the rhythm of her performance. The more the ground shook the more eyes were on her.

“” She shouted and slammed the end of her staff down on the cobblestone street. A wave rose from the ground and traveled along the street for a thousand feet to where it ejected a mass of ground, causing the buildings on both sides of the street to collapse and form a barricade. These buildings collapsed towards the street, just as Levyna had planned. The barricade forming a wall roughly ten feet tall across the road. She did have to use another skill to make sure the rubble-filled the street nicely.

She wasn’t done. That was just to bring the eyes of the elven refugees and the guards to her. She brought her staff up to her lips and kissed it, whispering, “Fires of Destruction!” to it, so that only she could hear. While the switch to fire wasn’t audible to her observers, the visuals were anything but calm. The top of her staff blazed into fire. The symbols traveled down from the head of the staff and down over her bracers, consuming the illusionary rock.

Holding the staff against the ground, she spun her body around and stretched out her arms. One of her legs came up and bent at the knees. Both she and the staff rose up into the air, her hands rising over her head slowly as if gathering power, and then she brought them down quickly in front of her.

The bellow of the spell, ‘’ was probably not heard as flaming boulders appeared in the sky, and rained down on the collapsed section of the street for several long seconds.

When the human landed, she fluffed out her blond hair as if it was nothing, and turned to look at the captain of the gate guard. The symbols of fire flared once more and then settled down to small flames swirling around the Elementalist.

“Would you mind opening the gates for us? We’d like to leave before more demons show up.”

Irina climbed down from the house and moved over to join Leyvna and Mariya. The tall elf doing her best to keep a straight face, she had seen Leyvna pull off similar feats of destruction, but this time it was excessive.

Lauq on the other hand was looking a bit miffed. Her argument wasn’t going anywhere but she felt like she didn’t need the help.

The guards and the fleeing citizens on the other hand were shocked, mouths opened as they hadn’t expected for one woman, a human no less, to be able to cause that much destruction to their town.

“I could open the gate myself if you like.” Levyna offered helpfully. “And you know that isn’t going to hold off the demons for too long, I do suggest that we get out of here quickly.”

The enlisted guards were faster on the uptake than the officers, and the gates were opened. The citizens fled through the gate, whether it was from the demons that were sure to come, or from the Elementalist who was already there and had already proved her point.

#Dimitri’s Perspective

“Well, this is different.” The warlock said to his companion.

“I think the dungeon has taken an active role in stopping us. I’m not sure why. We didn’t have plans to destroy the core.”

“Where’s the boss?”

“Beats me, it probably won’t materialize until we go in. I guess we’ll just have to hop to it.” Warnik said to him and sprinted forward to jump onto the first island. He landed with his legs spread wide and knees bent to absorb his momentum.

“It’s solid. Let’s go, Dimitri!”

The boss room was big but not that big. When they got to the center of it, a huge flame elemental rose up out of the lava and took a swing at them.

“” He cast the shield the first time, and moved it around to intercept the punch from the flame beast.

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Warnik took the advantage to slash at the flame with his poleax, trusting that it wouldn’t be damaged by the heat and fire. He kept a hold of the haft and the flame didn’t affect it. Unfortunately, the flame beast had stayed far enough away from the island that Warnik couldn’t reach it. The forsaker withdrew towards the warlock.

“It’s not going to be as easy as some of the other fights,” Dimitri commented.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have been so open with the anti-magic that I have.”

“You’re probably right my man.”

The fire monster moved fire-monster advanced to attack again. This time it brought both of its arms down on top of the pair. Dimitri’s still active shield moved to intercept, taking the full force of the impact. The shield moved downwards as flames licked around the edge of it.

“We’re going to have to try a few risky moves, Dimitri.”

“And we’re going to have to trust our luck too. What do you have in mind?”

“It seems to be avoiding me and focusing on you. It’s keeping out of my effective range with my poleax. I can’t disrupt its magic. So I’m thinking of hopping to the next island. And see if I can get it into a pincer between us.”

“It can just move away from that.” He looked around the room quickly, keeping his eye on the attacking monster, making sure his shield spell was in the way. He was able to keep the shield up with his mana regeneration alone.

“There’s an island in the corner over there, Warnik. We’ll have our backs to the wall there, but maybe we’ll be able to do a few things there.”

“Better than standing here in the middle, and maybe it’ll follow us. Time to see if this will work, let me carry you over there. Piggyback style.” He moved to present his back to the warlock.

“I won’t be able to use magic.” He said as he fended off another strike from the blazing fire creature.

“Yup, wait for the next attack.” The next attack came and he jumped onto his companion's back. The warrior then charged towards the beast and made a jump aiming to jump through the boss monster to the other side.

With the forsaker’s anti-magic the beast couldn’t counter-attack, it dissolved into the lava instead. This allowed Warnik to carry him from island to island till they reached the island in the corner. The oversized warrior used his poleax as a brace against the wall to bring them to a stop. He then turned around and let Dimitri off his back, facing outwards to allow the warlock a chance to recast his spell.

“” He cast instead of .

Warnik raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t say anything as he prepared for the next attack. The flaming lava monster reformed, but not next to the island they were on. A little farther out, and started to attack with balls of lava instead of with its fists.

“Shit!” Dimitri swore as the first ball of lava came towards them.

The angle it was traveling was like a baseball coming towards them. Warnik stepped to the side and swung at the ball of lava. The magic holding the ball hot was dispelled, solidifying the lava back into rock almost immediately. Warnik was still able to bat the rock ball away from Dimitri.

“Damn! I can’t do many of those. It’s a hell of a lot heavier than a baseball.”

“”

Dimitri shot out a ray of frost from his staff just as the next boulder of lava had been sent towards them. The ray of frost and the slab of lava crossed paths. Warnik missed the ball of lava this time, but with the warlock under the effects of displacement, the ball missed him as well and slammed into the wall behind them.

The line of frost hit the boss monster square in the torso. A scream like the sound of steam emitted from its flaming form as it reformed around the hole caused by his spell. The monster connected with the lava again and dissolved out of sight again.

“Warnik did you see that?”

“Yes. It took a few seconds to reform itself again. Think it would be a good window for us?”

“It’s probably going to be the best bet, my man!”

#Levyna’s Perspective

The polite thing to do was to wait for the civilians to get out of the city. The human Elementalist was having a hard time bringing up the feelings to care for the Elves after she had seen part of their economy, at least when it came to other Elves like Mariya and humans like Irina. It left a bad taste in her mouth.

She had to work her way around to thinking of them as ignorant instead of malicious. Bound by tradition instead of thinking about others as living and breathing human sentient beings. Upon some self-reflection, she realized that she had some of her own issues to work out, but for now, she would help the citizens escape. Or to get out of the city without the demons attacking them.

“Lauq, I’m going to fly up and see if we have any more demons inbound. If we do I’ll see what I can do to delay them. I don’t know what we can do about the people fleeing. Is there a place they can go to hide or hole up?”

The princess thought for a moment and then shook her head, “Nothing within a few weeks of travel on foot.”

Levyna sighed a bit and shook her head, “I don’t know what we can do to help them?”

“You don’t seem to like Elves, why would you care?”

“They’re still people. There are just four of us, and there are thousands of them. I don’t know if we even defend them. I don’t like the idea of leaving them to die by the hands of the demons, or to die by starvation of thirst.”

She switched back to her daggers, and used her ability, and flew up into the sky, to watch for demons approaching through the city.

The southern half of the city was in flames, and there were thousands of demons assaulting it. They were not leaving much behind, obviously razing the city instead of having plans to occupy it. She saw several groups of elves get chased down and captured by the demons. She could barely watch, knowing that she was only the one person, and while powerful, she could not fight all of them.

She still had her duty to the hero. The quest was marked as complete, but to her, the hero wasn’t safe until she was out of the city and to a place where she could do her hero business. Whatever that was.

The lack of information was frustrating. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do now. Should she stay in this new world, or should she go back to her own, she was changed that no-one would recognize her, except those that played Clan Assault with her. And even then there wouldn’t be much unique about her. There are only so many body styles, armor styles, hairstyles, and face styles available that she was sure that her avatar was not unique.

She needed to blow something up as she watched the demons work their way closer and closer to the northern gate, but she contained herself for now. No point in bringing too much attention to her, she was already making a target of herself by flying through the air. The demons themselves didn’t seem to have any fliers out, maybe because the Elves didn’t have a large flight contingent in their army. The walls didn’t have anything that looked like they would fight off an ariel invader.

That was a big mystery to her. Flight should be a standard magic ability, after all why stay on the ground when you can fly? The more she thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense to her. She turned around and looked down at the civilians as they fled from the city. They mostly kept to the road, forming large clumps. She hoped they’d make it, but pragmatically she couldn’t help them and the hero.

She watched the city some more, the demons still at least a mile away from the gate, and most of the citizens through she decided it was safe to land. With her decision made she set foot down again by the barricade she had made and walked back towards the rest of her party.

“So we talked about going northeast?” Levyna asked the other three women as she watched the last of the civilians leave.

“Yes, we did. Most of the citizens are heading north towards the nearest city. The road will eventually turn to the northwest to the valley where the city is. There’s a pass that we’ll be going through between the two mountain chains. It’s going to take a lot of walking to get there, but I don’t think getting horses will help.” The princess responded and started to braid her long hair behind her in preparation for the journey.

“You’re probably right, Lauq. The only time I’ve ridden a horse was years ago, and only for an hour, on a very calm horse. I also don’t know how to drive a wagon either. Do any of you?”

The three other women shook their heads and Levyna sighed softly, “Walking it is then. But maybe in the future, we’ll have better transportation. But as a philosopher from where I come from has said, ‘every journey starts with a single step’ or something like that.”