Chapter 6

  Now that the party had a moment, while resting, they glance around the room noticing that the walls were solid stone, with a light plaster molding at the ceiling, much different from the vertical wooden slats the previous floor had utilized.

  Skyla walked back over to the wall and the party rested for roughly an hour, Tanner eventually catching his breath and sidling up to the wall with everyone else. They were pretty quiet during the rest, keeping an eye out both forward and back in case the dungeon decided to provide a challenge to their rest. After an hour passed it seemed the dungeon had declined to interrupt them, however the ever-present ominous feeling remained the entire time, keeping the party on edge.

  Preparing to move forward they went through their warm-up routine again, not wanting to face something like the crustacean fight without limber muscles. After a few minutes of warm-up they moved forward into the next hallway, Skyla once more vigilant for traps. Finding none the party walked into the next room and found it empty.

  “Another loot room? Aren’t there typically only one of those per dungeon?” Gage asked, cautiously.

  “It looks like it, maybe with the difficulty spike and changed walls its counting this as a second dungeon?” Skyla mused.

  “Could be.. This is all so strange, don’t let your guard down, but lets look around.”

  The party repeated their actions from the previous loot room, Tanner standing guard near the exit, which was to the right of the room this time breaking another convention this dungeon had followed. Gage and Skyla tapped on walls and Annice looked for loose flooring. Annice was the one to find something this time, as she was pressing on floor off in the southwestern corner some of it fell away.

  “Think I found something in the floor.” Annice called out, Skyla and Gage jogged over and Skyla took a look, feeling around for obvious traps inside the hole that Annice had found. Finding nothing Skyla nodded to Gage who kicked in the rest of the hollow flooring, revealing a cloth sack and small treasure chest inside the hole. The chest once more contained a pile of unmarked dungeon coins, about twice as many as the previous chest had, and the sack contained:

  A rolled up leather traveling cloak.

  A fist sized gem that was glowing with a dull brown light.

  A small piano, small enough to fit in Skyla’s hand.

  “Is… Is that a piano?” Gage asked.

  “It sure looks like it.” Skyla replied and then pressed a finger to the keys. It made a full bodied discordant sound, as loud as a full sized piano would, as she pressed three of the keys at once, her fingers too large to play it with any accuracy.

  “You’d have to be tiny to play the thing..” Skyla added “We could probably sell it though, dunno what enchantments the other two items might have.”

  “Yea, more things we’ll have to have appraised.”

  Skyla handed the bag to Gage and then turned around, presenting the backpack to him. Gage then took the chest and bag and put them into the backpack, which was starting to get a bit heavy. Having now looted the room the party set off to the right and would would turn out to be the final room before the dungeon heart. Skyla checked for traps as they went and once more found nothing. Seemed this dungeon wasn’t as keen on traps as some others were, not that she was complaining.

  The party rounded corner after corner, cautiously as this was different from the first floor as well. After four of five turns in the hallway the next room opened up. The lighting in the room was red, though the party was unable to see where the light was coming from, however something the party could see was the large ogre-like monster on the far side of the room. The creature also saw them, but it didn’t advance on them. It was blue, nine feet tall, as wide as four men shoulder to shoulder. It was wielding a massive club and similar to the lobstrosities a couple rooms earlier it had a dozen tentacles erupting from its maw.

  The two parties stared at each other for a minute or two, longer than either expected, before Gage moved into position slowly, trying not to earn the things aggression. Once all four of them were in formation the not-an-ogre screeched at the party, much in the same way the crustaceans had, and charged. Gage charged as well, running to meet the opening attack and maybe draw first blood, Gage slammed his shield to the left with all his might and collided with the club, however the strength and mass of the ogre-like creature outclasses Gage completely and sent him flying to the right, slamming him into the stone wall. Gage didn’t stand back up.

  “Fuck!” Tanner cried out as he stabbed out at the monsters fist, which was just sitting there after hitting Gage. Annice started casting healing magic as soon as Gage hit the wall and a moment later, much faster now with the new support rune stone, green energy flooded out of her and into Gage, waking him up and healing the head trauma he had just experienced.

  A little dizzy, Gage stood up and got back in the fight. The possibly-better-than-an-ogre was swinging at Tanner, who was putting all of his focus into avoid the attacks by dodging, ducking, and jumping around them. Gage looked at his ruined shield, folded around where the club had hit it and rendered it useless for this fight he tossed it to the side with a curse and jumped up, charging the monsters right side and activating *Strike* to get a hit in. He slashed into the creature’s leg at the same time a fiery whip lashed out and wrapped around the things neck. The tougher-than-an-ogre screeched again, dropping the club and grabbing for its neck ineffectively – its hands passing through the magical fire unable to gain purchase on it.

  Gage hit it with *Strike* again, and again while Tanner followed suit and *Lunged* twice, not wanting to risk over extending again. The not-an-ogre-that-seemed-to-really-dislike-fire finally knocked a few extra brain cells together and started to swipe down at Tanner, however during its slow wind up Gage activated *Draw Attacks* and the thing switched targets over to Gage, missing by quite a wide margin as the fire held it in place and it swung out with its right hand while Gage was on the other side of it.

  Spear and sword both rained down on the beast as it swung its massive arms around slowly and the two party members dodged it exceptionally well until the creature grabbed at some debree and suddenly threw a torso sized rock at Skyla, who was still maintaining the fire. The rock easily ripped through tissue and bone, completely severing Skyla’s left arm, the force of the blow throwing her back and a wretched snapping sound signaled the breaking of her left leg.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Annice jumped into action again and moments later the bleeding had stopped. Unfortunately this level of curative magic couldn’t reconnect limbs, but Annice went to work on the broken leg, mending it quickly. Skyla wasn’t out of the fight though, she still had one arm and that was all she needed to throw out a large plume of fire, covering the tentacled-wanna-be-ogre’s face eliciting another scream of pain from the creature.

  The fire had much more drastic effects this time, blinding the creature as its eyes were cooked, Skyla pouring everything into the spell that the skill and fire booster would let her. The monster fell to its knees and then onto its ass, legs extended forward which Tanner took as a perfect final *Lunge* opportunity and activated the skill, rushing forward and slamming his spear into the things neck, usually a weak spot.

  The enhanced thrust had the desired effect and the now-dead-not-an-ogre’s head popped off, flying above and out of the flaming plume, nothing remaining of the neck. The flames died down, the monsters body flopped to the ground. Gage limped over to Skyla who was working on standing up, the activity made more difficult with the loss of her arm, Annice was helping her up though.

  “Good job, if it hadn’t have been weak to the fire we’d… We wouldn’t have made it without you.” He said to his one armed companion.

  “That sucked! Where’s my arm?” Skyla complained, looking around trying to find her missing limb. After a bit of looking around it turned up under the small boulder that was thrown at her, they had to roll it aside to find the absolutely ruined remains of her limb.

  “Fuuuuuck…. Thats not save-able, is it?” Skyla asked, almost pleadingly of Annice.

  “I’m afraid not… You’ll have to have a new one grown if you want it replaced.”

  “Fuck… that’s so expensive.”

  The monster finished melting into the floor about that time and a whole bunch of large catalyst crystals were left behind, significantly larger than the catalyst they found on the first floor. Skyla walked over and picked it up as Gage moved to his mangled shield. “Lets take a few, recover our strength, repair the gear that needs it, and then finish this dungeon off.” Gage said

  The party nodded its agreement and settle down along the western wall, Skyla grunting in a bit of pain as she forgot her arm was off and tried to use the stump to help her slide down the wall. A few moments later, after recovering from the burst of pain Skyla said “Well, at least we made a bunch of money, and collected more loot than I’ve ever seen from a single dungeon.”

  “They aren’t all like this… right?” Annice asked.

  “No… I’ve been through dozens of dungeons and this is the first like it. I’ve never heard of a dungeon like this.” Gage replied and Skyla nodded in agreement.

  Tanner added “This was brutal..” as he looked over his dented and slightly bent spear. It would need some work by an actual blacksmith to straighten it out, he’d never bent the spear before and he didn’t like the way it felt.

  “At some point we’ll need magical equipment, its tougher. Expensive too though.” Gage stated.

  Tanner nodded and said “That’s probably a priority, especially your shield.”

  “I’ve never had a problem with the shield before today.. Sometimes it would need some minor repairs, but to need to put it back together twice in one dungeon, across just a few encounters?” Gage supplied as he pounded his shield back into a semi-usable state. After resting for roughly half an hour the party slowly stood, stretched out – and headed into the orange glow of the dungeon heart. The dungeon heart of every dungeon had an orange glow, and it was the only room that ever did, it was unmistakable.

  Entering into the room Tanner looked around, stone walls, stone ceiling all looking like it had been dug out with claws. A large glowing orange crystal floated in the middle of the room. No pedestal, no holder, nothing under it that could have been enchanted to allow it to float, but float it did. The room was small, barely enough space to squeeze beside the crystal on each side.

  “Alright, lets destroy it and get out of here.. we could use some patching up back in town.” Gage said, glancing at Skyla. As Gage said these words and glanced towards his companion though something terrible happened. Tanner felt that sense of dread increase dramatically, the walls flexed inwards and Annice was gone. A foot left behind where she was standing as long teeth retracted back into the wall.

  There was no scream, Annice didn’t have the chance to make a sound, and she was gone, eaten by the dungeon itself. This wasn’t a trap, this wasn’t a monster, the dungeon was alive and Tanner irrefutably knew that now. He’d been seeing signs of it this entire time, the sweat on the walls, the flexing walls, and now the teeth. Those horrible teeth would haunt him, he was sure of it. Yellow, brackish, long and needly. And now there was no Annice.

  Tanner screamed out Annice’s name, but it was far too late, the rest of the party looked and saw she was gone.

  “The hell?” Gage yelled out.

  “The FUCKING WALL ate her” Tanner screamed “IT ATE HER”

  “That’s not..” Gage started to say but he glanced back at Skyla and saw three hands appearing out of the wall reaching out to grab her. Without further hesitation Gage body slammed the crystal, shield first, causing it to crack and then shatter. The hands dissolved instantly, melting into the floor as if they hadn’t existed. As the crystal shattered energy rippled out of it, energy the same color as paintings of the wound depicted. The same energy as the swirling vortex that was being sucked out of Rivas erupted around them, bolstering the remaining party member’s strength as the dungeon started to rumble and shake.

  “We’ve gotta go” Gage called out.

  “Annice, what about Annice?!” Tanner called out, searching over the now smooth stone where the teeth were located, pounding on it trying to find a hollow resonance.

  “She’s… She’s gone, we’ll be gone too if we don’t leave – NOW” Gage commanded as he ran over to grab Tanner by the shoulder. Tanner was spun around and the two men locked eye’s for a moment before Tanner nodded, slowly, and then they ran. Gage, Skyla, and Tanner all three ran, Annice’s booted foot clutched in Tanners hand. They encountered no resistance on their way out of the collapsing dungeon and they stopped to rest a good hundred feet from its entrance. After a minute or two, as they were still catching their breath the small hill fell in on itself, the door crumbling to dust, nothing left behind but a small mound of dirt.

  “It’s gone… She’s gone….” Tanner said in tears. “Do they usually collapse like that?” he went on to ask.

  “No… this whole dungeon was bizarre. I can’t believe it ate her…” Gage said.

  ‘This is awful, this was supposed to be an easy run.” Skyla said, also in tears.

  They spent a little time recovering, Tanner wrapping Annice’s remains in cloth and placing it gently in his bag. After a bit the party set back out to the south, back to Zrora. They traveled in silence, each grieving their loss and wondering what this meant going forward.

  After about a mile of travel back they re-aligned with the city gates and noticed smoke in the sky above where the city should be. A lot of smoke. Thick black tendrils of it reached towards the sky from a couple dozen different sources.

  “The hells? This day keeps getting worse!” Gage said and he started into a fast jog. “We need to get back!”

  “Is.. is that Zrora?!” Tanner called out incredulously.

  “Yea… its Zrora, something awful must have happened there too.” Skyla replied.

  The party jogged, speeding up their trip significantly, what would have taken them the day to walk back took only an hour at the much faster pace.

  Closing in on the city they could smell burnt wood and much worse on the wind and they quickened their pace into a run, a slower run as Skyla was having trouble staying balanced with the missing arm, Tanner had taken her backpack earlier to help out, but a run none-the-less. The northern gates were wide open and people, civilians it looked like, had spilled out of the gates and were resting and recuperating on the grass outside the city.

  There were a few guards stationed around to help keep the peace as frayed nerves could be easily seen all over the area. Gage ran up to the first guard he saw and called out “What in the twenty hells happened here?”

  “The hells indeed, monsters broke through the wall, shattered a section of it north of the main eastern gate… Ran havoc through the city before the adventurer’s stopped ‘em.”

  “Thousands are dead, civvies, adventurers, guards, the beasts killed indiscriminately. Something changed with the World Eater last night during the centennial, the aura was stronger, there was an earthquake and then all hell broke loose.”