Author's Note: This chapter ended up a lot longer than I intended, about the twice the length of any others! What was meant to be a short dungeon romp turned into a crawl. I considered uploading it as two separate submissions, but all of the sexy stuff happens in the second half. I thought it would be bad manners to upload a dry chapter, so it's kept as just one document. So if you're looking just for the sexy times, skip to where it says "Chapter 6," about halfway through. Thanks for reading!
Chapter Five
"That's the place. There, over yonder," the scout said. He was a short, gaunt man with a wiry black beard. He had mumbled his name when they first met outside of Ankreot, but Delyssa couldn't remember it and had not found the courage to ask again. They had left the village the same morning they had arrived. Brynwa had argued in favor of staying long enough to re-quip and rest at the tavern, but Vael and Cenhera had formed the traditional line of battle and disagreed, and this time Delyssa shared their opinions. The idea of a real meal and a real bed filled her with a yearning almost sexual, but she knew that if she had those comforts now she would never be persuaded to abandon them to explore a dark, underground and monster-filled ruin.
The scout was pointing a grubby, swollen-knuckled finger from the hilltop they stood on to the adjacent peak, where high stone outcroppings and low brush covered the terrain.
"It's about halfway up the west face, between some boulders," the scout continued. "It might take some lookin' but this is as far as I go."
"How much of the tunnel did you explore?" Vael asked.
The scout spat. "Only until I saw it breach into a chamber. As soon as I saw brickwork I got out and sent word to the guild. After that it was just waiting." He cast a wary eye over the party to indicate that the waiting persisted for too long.
Vael pressed the reins of Dereac into the scouts hand and followed it with a handful of silver pieces. "My thanks for your help. Take our animals and stable them at the Daft Dragon Inn. We should be back to collect them soon. You may ride Brynwa's horse but not Dereac here."
The scout spat again. "I'll walk 'em. This ain't horse land," he grumbled, but took the other two sets of reins and began to lead the animals back down the slope towards town. "Best of luck on your quest, adventurers!" he called over his shoulder.
Delyssa shivered, apprehensive now that they were at the site of their quest. The journey from where the manticore attacked them had been a tense one, and she still caught herself frequently casting an eye up and scanning the clear skies. Now that they were about to crawl into a dungeon where they knew that at least one monster lurked, she felt reluctant to continue. But Vael set off down towards where the scout pointed, and Delyssa and the others followed.
She used her staff as a walking stick on the descent — the first real use for it so far on this journey. Cenhera walked up alongside Vael, hopping downwards from one rock to another to match the paladin's long strides. Brynwa walked close behind Delyssa, occasionally reaching out to steady the acolyte as she stumbled over loose rock or tripped over a hard root sticking out of the ground.
There were no signs of any other creatures around the hills, though Brynwa pointed out rabbit tracks as they crossed the flat, sandy stretch between the two hills. After a quick conference, it was decided that they would climb straight up the other hill, so that if anything lurked on the opposite side, they would approach it from above.
They picked their way between boulders embedded in the earth as they climbed, taking care to avoid stepping where loose gravel would spill out from underfoot and give away their ascent to anything nearby. Cenhera, lightest and most agile of the group, quickly pulled ahead, covering ground in leaps and somersaults. The tunling disappeared over a tall rock, only to poke her head over after a moment and frantically gesture for them to follow.
"I don't spot anything moving down there," she hissed. "But you should all get up here to see this."
They abandoned their stealthy approach and climbed after Cenhera. At one point, Brynwa scrambled upwards on all fours, shifting stones and earth beneath her pawing.
They crested the peak of the hill, looking downwards over a steep drop on the western face. It took a moment for Delyssa to register what she was looking at.
"Huh," said Brynwa, straightening up beside her.
The entire face of the hillside below them was scarred. Boulders and stones were clearly carved away, smooth swathes simply missing from their forms.
Delyssa squinted and tilted her head. The missing portions of the hill, where the earth was simply displaced, followed crisscrossing paths, as if everything in a line had disintegrated. Curiously, where the furrows sank into the ground, half-pipe trenches more than two arms' spans across, roots of trees and brush protruded out uninterrupted. Whatever ate through the stone left the plant matter entirely intact.
"That doesn't bode well," Cenhera said.
"What sort of creature can do that?" Delyssa asked.
"Nothing good." Vael said firmly. They began their descent.
As the scout had promised, it was a short time before they found the tunnel leading into the heart of the hill. The hole was nestled between two boulders, one of which was missing its top third. It was wide enough in diameter that Delyssa could walk upright, though Vael and Brynwa would have to stoop. The fighter continued down a little way past the hole to investigate where the converging lines of missing earth were at their densest.
Cenhera and Vael crouched in the entrance of the tunnel. "No markings along the wall," the tunling observed. "Stone's smooth as if it eroded away."
"What about this?" Vael said, trailing his hand along the floor of the tunnel. Delyssa peered over his shoulder. Long scratches, hatching over one another, disappeared down into the darkness. Claw marks, each set wider across than her head.
"Come and look at this," Brynwa called up to them. They turned away from the tunnel and joined the fighter, who was standing on a wide patch of flat, dark dirt. Brynwa scuffed the dirt with her boot, revealing a lighter substance beneath it that matched the rest of the terrain.
"Was the top layer burned?" Delyssa asked.
Brynwa shook her head. "It's dried blood, I think."
Delyssa looked around. The dark patch on the ground was huge. "Blood from what? From the monster we're looking for?"
"I doubt it," said Vael. "If it was, where are its bones?"
"If it had any," said Cenhera. "We don't know what kind of monster it is."
"Even if it was," Vael said, "our mission is still to clear the rest of the ruins. This just means we should be cautious."
"As if that has stopped anything before," Brynwa grumbled.
"Right, let's not dally about," said Cenhera. "Here's what I think. We march in, me about fifty big-paces in front. The rest of you come in after me — Vael in front, Delyssa in the middle holding the torches, and Bryn coming up behind. If we get to an intersection, I'll wait for you. If I see anything, I'll come back and get you, and if anything comes up behind you, give a shout and I'll come back. Sounds good?"
"Works for me," said Brynwa.
"Agreed," said Vael.
There was a beat of silence before Delyssa realized that they were waiting for her. "Er, yes. That sounds smart to me," she said. Cenhera shrugged.
They arranged themselves by the tunnel entrance. Brynwa kept her greatsword strapped to her back and carried unsheathed a smaller broadsword. Vael planted his sword in the ground and focused on tightening the shield straps around his forearm. Delyssa stood uncertainly between the two, her staff held in the crook of her arm as she rifled through her pack to remove the torches and strap them to the side.
Cenhera drew one of her daggers and slipped into the tunnel, quickly disappearing from sight, and Delyssa almost immediately lost track of the sound of her soft footsteps upon the stone.
Delyssa tucked the first torch between her knees and swung the pack over her shoulder. The clink of flint against steel seemed loud against the quiet dungeon before them. After the torch was lit, she held it aloft, up to the left so the burning drops of oil wouldn't fall on her hands.
Vael turned to her and Brynwa and nodded. Brynwa put a reassuring hand on Delyssa's shoulder. Together they stepped forwards into the darkness.
#
As the scout had described, it wasn't long before the smooth bore of the tunnel gave way to dark brickwork. The passage did not so much emerge as merge with the chamber, the slight downward incline of the tunnel dipping into the cobbled floor, the stone smoothly carved away like the rest of the rock. The claw marks on the tunnel floor, the grooves glinting in the torchlight, were visible in the chamber — the beast that presumably made the tunnel had continued on in its own exploration.
The walls extended on their left and right — on the party's right-hand side they could see the corner wall, disappearing into the darkness before them. Delyssa could just barely make out the opposite walls of the chamber at the edge of her torchlight. The dancing flicker of the torch she held seemed to deepen the shadows rather than dispel them.
The dry, heavy air weighed down on her, reminding her of the mausoleum in the Temple of Shevlana.
The chamber was far bigger than the cramped, claustrophobic passageways she had imagined. There were five pillars, rising up to meet the vaulted ceiling. They were arrayed in a three-by-two pattern, and where the sixth pillar should have been, the opposite corner from the tunnel they now exited from, there were great round blocks of stone scattered about the floor.
"The beast dissolved the bottom half of the pillar, and the rest of it came tumbling down," Vael conjectured as he took in the sight.
They fully entered the chamber, the only noise the crackle of torches and the step of boots against stone. On the far wall of the chamber there was a circular gap in the brick, an identical tunnel to the one they entered from, though this one was filled to nearly its ceiling with loose brick and rock that had collapsed in from above.
"Whatever this beast is, it's probably not intelligent enough to know about structural engineering," Brynwa said. "Hopefully it's made a cave-in over itself and got squashed. That would save us a lot of trouble."
"If it can eat through stone, why would it care if it caused a cave-in?" Vael said.
