Chapter 6

  Dearth

  The party woke the following morning, Dearth up first as was usual, having not noticed the large eyeball that appeared overnight on the ceiling above them. The eye was closed now, and had been for the last hour or so. “Dammit Leoma, Did you fall asleep on your watch again?” Dearth called out, storming over to Leoma and kicking her leg as she laid there, not keeping an eye out for trouble.

  “Huh, whazzat?” Leoma said in a bit of a stupor as she came to suddenly.

  “You fell asleep again!” Dearth reiterated to the now semiconscious person that was supposed to be watching their backs during the last portion of the night.

  “No I din’t, you fell asleep.” Leoma rebutted

  “I… you… what? Uhg, whatever, it’s morning – get up.” Death had started to put up a fight, but gave up – there was little point with Leoma. Leoma was going to Leoma no matter what Dearth tried to do about it. As Dearth walked away he heard a quiet “Huh hah hah” behind him that he pointedly ignored.

  Dearth was on breakfast duty as usual since he was the first one up. He got a fire put together and roaring, pulled out the cookware – a cast iron skillet, the stand for the skillet, some cooking utensils, a medium sized pot with stand and a large water skin that they carried for cooking purposes, separate from their drinking water. Dearth poured water into the pot and placed some of the vegetables scoured from the plant archers the previous evening inside said pot.

  He then pulled out the last of the snake and sliced it into quarter inch chunks and after heating the pan up with a little vegetable oil he tossed the snake in. With a little fresh snorth he added some dried and powdered herbs that often go well on white meats like Oozl or some white fishes. Once the snake meat was cooked he added some hashed vegetables that he had prepared before slicing the snake and cooked that up, slicing the hash into large portion sized pieces for the adventurers once the hash was browned and crispy.

  He then repeated the process with the hashed vegetables, because adventurers eat a lot and a single pan full was not enough to feed the six of them. Nor was a second pan full. Once the plant vegetables were good and soft he pulled those out, tossing them into a dented metallic preparation bowl, and mashed them up with a bit of leftover animal fat. All of the food he cooked he plated onto 6 different plates and started calling out to the party whom had been slowly waking up due to the smell of the meal.

  “Snake, hash and mash” Dearth called out as people approached for a plate. As Wulf approached the food he took a look at the pan and said “You should really cook the hash before the snake, non-meats first, could make someone sick with a different sort of meat.”

  “Ah.. right, thanks for the tip Wulf.”

  Wulf just nodded to the man and grabbed his plate, sitting around the fire to dig in. “Hey, this snakes not bad.” Eostre chirped happily while eating. “I’m not a world class chef like our Wulf here, but I can fumble my way through a meal or two.” Dearth said proudly. “Glad to see you on your feet.”

  “Me too, still a bit unsteady though, these twigs of mine aren’t quite ready for action yet.” Eostre complained.

  “Plan was to take the day off, still is.” Dearth reminded her.

  “Oh, right – That’s good, I’m not ready to dive into anything yet.”

  She would probably be fine by mid day, but Dearth didn’t want to risk it and had decided the full day would be fine, they likely wouldn’t get a lot of the floor below explored but that was ok, there wasn’t a rush. Once the meal was finished and the dishes cleaned and packed back up the party engaged in some light exercise. The group was roughly one hundred feet back from the overhead space where the plant vulture dropped out of, not wanting to risk it respawning on them while they were under it. This put them too far from the door and any walls to notice the tremors or slime forming on the wall. The dungeon was hungry, watching, and drooling while waiting for it’s chance.

  Dearth took some time to pull out a small blacksmiths hammer and tend to his shield and armor. The armor had a few holes from the arrows that those pint sized plant archers that had pierced into him and his plan was to repair it as best he could. He hammered the metal back into place, pieces had bent inwards from the previous days blows, realigned the jagged edges as best he could and pulled a crystal out of his bag. This repair crystal could mend metals that were close enough to each other back into a solid state if they previous held one, as if the metal remembered the form it used to have.

  He held the crystal out over the jagged edges and squeezed, shattering the crystal. The crystal burst into dust which poured over the metal and down in through the cracks, giving off a light too intense to look at. After a moment the light died down and Dearth inspected the repaired armor. Slight scaring was in place along the seams where the cracks were, as if the metal was made of flesh and had healed itself.

  “Looks good.” Dearth said to himself, unfortunately the hole in Elven’s leather and Eostre’s cloth clothing could not be repaired in this way – the crystals only worked on metal. Eostre had changed into different clothing anyway, so the holes in her previous outfit weren’t there, Elven however had a half inch in diameter hole in the leather covering his right leg.

  The party took most of the day off, mending, polishing and sharpening their gear. Games of chance were played, dice were rolled and cards were slammed onto a flat stone they were using as a table. Leoma blamed just about everyone of cheating against her every time she lost a round, Eostre teased and laughed constantly. Wulf was solemn and quiet while Chadwick kept mostly to himself, reading that book of his. Elven gambled with the party while Dearth bounce around between groups.

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  Eventually dinner was made and eaten and another night was passed, this time without Leoma on watch. Still nothing was noted during the night, despite the dungeon chomping at the bit to get a bite. In the morning breakfast was made as usual by Dearth, eaten by the party, cleaned up and then the camp broken down.

  “Legs good to go?” Dearth asked of Eostre.

  “Sure are!” Eostre said while doing a few squats to show her stability off.

  “Good, I’m tired of sitting around, let’s see whats on the other side of that door.” Dearth replied as the party finished packing up.

  Stretches were performed and warm ups had as the party got ready for the day, weapons and armor inspected again to ensure function. Once all due diligence had been performed the party advanced towards the lone door that sat under the dark ceiling where the plant vulture had dropped out at them from. Elven was in the lead as usual watching for traps, as they reached the door Elven noticed that there was a sliding stone door mechanism that was currently open in the doorway.

  “This door will probably close behind us.” Elven stated.

  “Wulf, you have the rods – right?” Dearth turned to Wulf and asked.

  “Aye, in the bag, I’ll grab one.” Wulf responded, pulling his bag off and reaching his hand into a black void at the top of the now opened bag. A moment later he pulled out a roughly two and a half food long rod that was an inch thick and made of Bethite which was about three times stronger than steel. It was a difficult to work metal, however it held enchantments better than steel, it was stronger, and significantly more durable. The rod was intended for situations just like this – to keep doors open in case an emergency escape from a room that closed itself off was needed.

  Wulf handed the rod up to Elven who wedged it into the doorway, it looked like the door slid out horizontally so he aligned the rod in that manner to keep it from sliding closed on them. “Should be good, this hallway doesn’t appear to have any traps.” Elven said.

  The hallway was roughly fifty feet long, a relatively short hallway, that looked like it opened up afterwords. The room beyond was dark and they couldn’t tell what was in it yet. As the party all entered the room Wulf, taking up the rear guard position at this time, finally noticed the walls twitch – after he had entered this three foot wide hallway.

  “Dungeon’s here!” Wulf cried out, turning around in time to see the stone door slam shut, the Bethite rod posing no resistance to it as it was made of something heavier despite the stone exterior. The party had all turned a second later and saw the door closed. “Shit shit, into the room – NOW.” Dearth called out quickly.

  The party which had frozen turned again and started running as a crack formed halfway down the hall, right around Leoma’s position. The crack rapidly gained in size, spreading vertically from a few inches to roughly seven feet tall in a fraction of a second – resulting in the loud sound of stone cracking open. Leoma had just a moment to activate her *Armor of Belief* skill as Eostre cried out “Leoma!!”

  Jagged, grotesque teeth reached out to engulf Leoma, but Leoma is a large woman standing a little taller than the crack and quite wide . The teeth, unable to wrap around Leoma hesitated for a moment before deciding to aim for her middle and chomp off what it could – that hesitation saved Leoma’s life. As the teeth slammed shut at an impossible speed they shattered. Leoma was wrapped in a golden yellow glow as she held her arms up to try to soften the blow.

  Leoma had a lot of belief, not in a deity, not in anything external even. She had belief in herself – tons of it. There was nothing that Leoma thought she couldn’t accomplish and this supreme belief translated perfectly into her defense with the activated skill. The mouth with the now broken teeth retracted back into the wall with a horrid screech as Dearth turned and grabbed the front of Leoma’s plate mail pulling her towards the exit of the hallway, causing the glow around her to fade. A second crack started to form as the first one retracted and shrank. The party ran and managed to get out of the hallway before the second mouth fully formed, leaving it to howl ineffectually as the meal it had patiently been waiting for evaded it.

  Breathing heavily with adrenaline pumping through their veins the party stopped on the other side of the hallway to catch their breath, all but Elven that is. Elven had thrown a flare into the deep room beyond them to ensure there wasn’t an enemy waiting for them. There was nothing living there though, as the howling continued behind him he maintained his vigil forwards and discovered an immense treasure trove of ore.

  This room, deep in this cavern, was completely filled with advanced ore veins. Bethite, Hescacium, Mythril and even some smaller deposits of Astil. Hescacium was stronger than Bethite, however it did not hold enchantments very well, in fact magic tended to dissipate when it encountered the metal. It was a very hard metal to mine and work with due to its intense durability and magic resistance. Mythril was lightweight and held enchantments well, it was also incredibly durable, roughly the same durability as Hescacium but much easier to work with. Astil was the metal of all metals, it had the highest durability and actually enhanced enchantments that were put into the metal by a significant amount. Astil wasn’t the easiest metal to work with but with its susceptibility to magic it was much easier than the other high end metals.

  This cave was an absolute fortune worth of metal, for each of the adventurers. They got a portion of the profits that anything useful they discovered brought in. The Guild technically owned everything they found, however that wouldn’t encourage anyone to clear the dungeons out, or kill the monsters so the Guild ‘bought’ the useful things off the adventurers and then redistributed said goods between crafters and those that could make use of the materials.

  There was more than enough ore here for them all to retire permanently and live an absolutely lavish lifestyle for the rest of their longer than average lives with the ore they had just found. Where was the fun in that though? These were adventurers and adventure is what they lived for, except for Wulf who dreamed of opening his own restaurant. Wulf would be able to achieve that dream now and take the adventuring a bit easier afterwords.

  The howling eventually died down allowing the party to look down the hallway. There were the broken teeth of the dungeon laying on the ground. No one had ever gotten their hands on the teeth of a dungeon before – this could also be an incredibly valuable material, however no one was willing to go back into that hallway just yet. Wulf was the first to notice it, but there was a lever on the wall right outside the hallway.

  Wulf walked up and gave it a look, it was in a downward position. He called Elven over to inspect it, and after a few minutes of examining it Elven determined that it seemed safe, so he pulled it. The door back at the beginning of the hallway slid back open when he did. “Huh, I guess that’s to protect the room, if this were back on Rivas we could easily farm this and lock the door to prevent anyone from sneaking up on us while we were mining.” Elven said.

  “Oh, that is nice. Close it back up then, that way if that vulture bastard respawns it won’t find its way back in here.” Dearth called out.

  There were no other exits to this room, Elven spent an hour or two searching for secret doors or hollow walls and found none. Dearth pulled out his map and marked this area as a mining room and the party eventually backtracked through the hallway, grabbing the teeth, then the cavern back to the rope and continued downwards. The dungeon had moved on having been denied its meal.