Well, they were about to encounter a couple of surprises that she’d set up for fire mages. She was actually looking forward to it—
Sistina’s attention was suddenly wrenched away by a pair of lips pressing against hers and kissing her insistently. Her eyes shooting open in surprise, Sistina found Phynis giggling as she kissed Sistina, arms wrapped around the dryad’s body as the princess distracted her at the most inopportune time Sistina could imagine.
* * *
“Okay, these might be a touch nastier than what most beginners should deal with,” Joseph called out, dodging to the side as another of the plant-creatures fell to the floor.
“Agreed. Not too bad, though the one above the door would be deadly if you didn’t know about it,” Darak agreed, blocking the path of another of the creatures. It was standing near one of the closer trees, one with a bunch of bright red fruit he didn’t recognize hanging from it.
“True.” Penelope shoved the plant from behind, causing it to stumble. “The traps on the floor are pretty well disguised too, but they’re passive. You don’t step in them, you’ll be fine.”
“Right. Let me just deal with this damned—” Darak brought his axe around with both hands, grunting as the flaming axe cut through the plant-creature’s arm like he was splitting a thin log. But as it passed through the creature, the edge of his fiery blade nicked one of the fruits. A sudden wave of heat and pressure sent Darak reeling backward in spite of his increased weight, and it took him a moment to regain his balance.
It took a few moments for Darak to realize what had happened. His head was ringing from the explosion in a cramped cave, which accounted for some of his distraction. The sprawling figures of Joseph and Penelope were the first realization that something bad had occurred, as was the sight of the soot-covered tree. All of the tree’s fruits were missing and the plant-creature was little more than smoldering remnants on the ground, even as a cloud of foul-smelling smoke spread through the chamber.
“What just happened?” Penelope groaned, levering herself up at the same time as Joseph.
“Oh, my aching head,” the cleric muttered, wincing as he sat up. “What in the hells was that?”
“No… no idea,” Darak answered, his ears ringing as he swayed, in more than a bit of pain. Fortunately, he didn’t see any other opponents in the room, so he unsteadily stepped over to a rock and took a seat, wincing.
“That was the explosion of the fruit of a firestorm tree,” Nirath spoke grimly from behind them, the elf being the only one who hadn’t been in the immediate blast radius. She was still slightly smoky about the edges, but looked fine. “The fruit is filled with an extremely volatile oil that is used to launch its seeds up to half a mile during an explosion. I’m guessing that the dungeon added it to make using fire in the dungeon more… interesting.”
“Damn. That’s a nasty little trap to spring. Let me get us healed up a bit before we do anything else. Ow.” Joseph winced. “And this is the first damned room.”
“Well, the explosion was more loud and sudden than anything else. Last thing I’d want is that going off in the middle of a fight,” Penelope offered, on her feet by that point, even if she looked unhappy. “But I don’t think it’d critically injure anyone.”
“My ears disagree with you,” Darak replied flatly. “This place had better have damned good rewards to be worth dealing with shit like that.”
“Perhaps. But if I’m smelling something right…” Nirath paused, taking a deep breath, and stepped into the room, looking cautiously for other threats or traps as she searched. “Let me see… ooh, I was right! Spellbloom!”
“Say what?” Joseph paused in healing Penelope for a moment, standing on the tips of his toes to look past the elf.
“Well, maybe it is worth the frustration,” Darak admitted, looking at the delicate blue flowers that were hidden in the corner of the cavern. Conveniently out of range of the tree's explosion, he noticed sourly.
“Yes, it is. Now heal me, Joe, before I have to hurt you.” Penelope’s voice was tart, jostling the cleric out of his surprise.
* * *
Daniel looked up as he saw the group of adventurers come out of the dungeon and gawked, stunned by the sight of them.
The first out was Penelope, who was limping slightly and had an impressive-looking bruise along one side of her face. Right behind her was Nirath, who looked relatively untouched, aside from her hair being a few inches shorter on the right side. Behind the pair were Darak and Joseph, and the two men looked less than thrilled, with the cleric limping heavily and with a sealed cut along his jaw. Darak didn’t look like he’d been hurt, though. But all of them were covered in soot and ashes, while Darak was covered in not only soot, but what looked like a massive amount of sap that had then been exposed to fire. The charcoal-like mess was horrifying, and the smell was… unpleasant.
“What happened to you?” Daniel asked almost reflexively, staring at them.
“Pack of wolves,” Penelope grumbled, wincing as she took another step. “Each half again the size they should have been.”
“After them was some weird plant-lady growing out of the center of a flower. She manipulated a bunch of plants against us to concentrate us into the middle of the room,” Joseph added, wincing as he leaned against a nearby tree. “At which point she dropped a massive pitcher-plant worth of pine sap on Darak.”
“I was trying to deal with the half-dozen giant bees, and didn’t see that coming,” Nirath added, sounding miffed. “Which is why the plant-woman directing the opponents pitched a firestorm fruit at us.”
“I hate intelligent opposition,” Penelope groaned, stretching an arm painfully.
“But at least it was worth the time. And it gives us a better idea of how to deal with such events on further delves,” Nirath reminded the others, shaking her head as she added, “Even if that last fight was on the difficult side, can you really say it wasn’t worth it?”
“Nope.” Darak seemed glum to admit it, and the other two shook their heads too.
“Well, umm… good? I’m glad you made it out safely,” Daniel told them, and shook his head again, surprise almost pinning him in place. He wasn’t sure if he was stunned that they were alive, or that they had gotten so badly mauled, at least visibly, inside the dungeon. Finally, he asked nervously. “So, umm… did you happen to see anyone in there? Or their bodies?”
“Hmm? Oh right, your friends. No, no… we didn’t see anything like that. But from what you’ve said, it’s been a while. They may have been moved or buried. Dungeons do that a fair amount,” Joseph replied tiredly, smiling gently at Daniel. “I think we’re going a day or two of downtime before trying again. That place is far more dangerous than I expected.”
Chapter 34
“Is something wrong, Farlon?” Desa asked, pausing as she saw the sage returning from the library. The elf looked like he’d been fuming about something, which startled her due to how enthusiastic he’d initially been about the chance to study the material in the library.
“Is something wrong? Ha! As if there was something going right for a change. I’d thought that coming across an intact library of Everium would make things better, not be simply maddening!” Farlon snarled, viciously kicking a rock into a nearby field.
“What’s wrong? I didn’t think there were many problems during the first few days, and I haven’t heard anything since,” the captain asked, her curiosity and worry growing.
“Oh, there weren’t any issues at the time. We found it easy to map out the different book sections, and finding that the catalog was up to date was a lifesaver.” Farlon brushed that off, taking a deep breath as he stopped and stared across the cavern glumly. “Then we started running into translation problems.”
“Translation problems? I thought that everyone in your team knew Everium’s elven script,” Desa asked, bewildered. Hells, even she knew the script, though she wasn’t the best with it. It was commonly taught in all of Sifaren’s magical schools
and apprenticeships, due to most of their primers on magic originating in Everium.
“We do. The problem is that only a third of the books are in that script. A lot of their books had been passed down over thousands of years, or from other countries. So, imagine some of this… ancient elven coming from nations from six thousand years before the Godsrage, or even earlier! They’re even more ancient, and we don’t know that language well at all. We’re having to translate books on translating ancient script, and that’s astoundingly slow-going,” Farlon ranted, positively quivering in anger as he threw his hands up. “And beyond that, there are other languages in there which I’ve never seen or heard of before! It’s maddening, especially since we can’t get into the damned restricted section either!”
“Ah. Ugh, I never even thought of that. I suppose a lot of the books in our libraries are in older languages, so it makes a sort of sense,” Desa replied, wincing at the description as she finally understood his frustration. “But why can’t you get into the restricted section?”
“It’s warded and requires a specific key to open.” Farlon sighed, rubbing his eyes. “And with as large and messy as the library is, we haven’t found it. Assuming that the key is in the library.”
“Why not ask Sistina if she could help?” Desa asked, frowning again and tilting her head toward the small glade where Sistina was sitting, watching Phynis weave a crown of flowers. “She should know quite a bit about the library.”
“Because she’s been so very helpful so far?” Farlon asked caustically, shaking his head firmly. “Why should I ask her? We’ll figure it out eventually.”
“Perhaps because you haven’t been very polite to her. She told us initially that it would take her a month to unearth the temple. We left and came back to find it not only unearthed, but stabilized and with a decent path to it.” Desa’s temper flared as she spoke, but she held back as she glanced toward the two in the glade. Despite her own problems with Sistina at the moment, the dryad had been nothing if not helpful, so she continued. “Your first question was to ask when she’d be done repairing the building. Tell me, Farlon, how much mana does it take to rebuild and meld stone like that? To create tunnels that can stand against the weight of the mountain above us? How much does it take to do everything she’s done for us, including housing us and allowing the plants that feed us to grow quickly? And she is doing all of it, all of it, for nothing. We’ve done nothing for her at all. In fact, if we hadn’t run into Lily, she would still be in this mountain without an entire encampment of Kelvanis soldiers outside the entrance. Personally, I suspect that’s where her attention has been focused. I think she’s been keeping them out. And I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a good thing!”
“That’s…” Farlon took a step backward, taken aback by her vehemence, but Desa sniffed derisively, then walked toward the two women.
Sistina looked up at Desa from where she was sitting, her face tranquil, though a flicker of a smile crossed her face when Phynis placed the crown of small white flowers on the dryad’s head, the princess grinning broadly. Phynis’ eyes flickered a little more darkly as she looked at Desa and Farlon, but she didn’t say anything. That made Desa’s own worries ease slightly. No matter how unhappy she was with Phynis’ decision, at least her distrust seemed to be slowly easing as she associated with Sistina.
“My apologies for the interruption, Sistina, but the researchers are apparently having a problem,” Desa told her, bowing her head slightly. “Might you be willing to tell us if you know how to access the restricted section?”
“Yes,” Sistina spoke after a moment, nodding. Then she frowned and spoke gravely. “Dangerous. Cautious. Archivist’s office. Bottom… drawer. Key. Password, bibliophile.”
The last word was spoken with a very different, archaic inflection, but it didn’t stop Phynis from giggling at it. Desa smiled as well, nodding her thanks. “Thank you, Sistina. Your words seem to be coming more easily now.”
Sistina rolled her eyes at that and pointed at Phynis. “Insistent. Distracting.”
“Distracting you from what?” Phynis asked, obviously startled as her eyes narrowed. “You haven’t said anything about me distracting you before.”
Farlon opened his mouth to say something, but Sistina spoke first. “Adventurers.”
“Ad—wait, there are adventurers in the caves?” Desa paled at the thought, and swallowed hard before she asked softly, “Are they close to reaching here?”
“No.” Sistina shook her head firmly, and gave the suddenly pale Phynis a gentle hug as she spoke. “Changed caverns. Read books. Planned defenses. Exhausted self.”
Raising her hands as if to cup water, Sistina concentrated, and a series of glowing golden lights floated over from her tree to above her hands. They slowly formed into a number of large sparks, connected by narrow, glowing pathways. The brightest spark was near the center, with the pathways past that one growing fewer, while a single path had no spark at the end of it in the other direction. Sistina nodded and spoke. “Old caves. Simple.”
Simple? Desa looked at the layout and realized that if it hadn’t been for Lily guiding them, it could have taken hours or days to find Sistina’s cavern, with the complex layout of the caverns from before. Unless they were lucky and stumbled into it, she supposed. A moment later, the lights began to change before her eyes.
Dozens more lights, no, hundreds of sparks indicating caverns began to appear above and below the previous set. Complex pathways that branched, looped, and ended randomly began to connect them like a damaged spiderweb. The central spark was cut off from the original pathways, and a massive web took form, so that the one entrance she’d seen was connected only distantly. Anyone entering the caves would have to work their way downward through successive ‘floors’ of caverns to the bottom of a rough sphere of chambers, then work their way back up the other side of it to reach her cavern, and even then, the web of possible chambers made it difficult to reach the cavern they were in.
“New caverns. Complex. Tiring. Guardians incomplete.” Sistina frowned, then pointed at about the tenth cave on the opposite side. It was the last one on the first floor, Desa realized, and her worry eased a little at Sistina’s explanation. “Adventurers. Cautious. Slow. Dangerous.”
“I see. That must have taken a long time to complete a maze like that,” Desa replied, giving Farlon a pointed look. “Will you warn us if they get close? Please?”
“Yes.” Sistina smiled, but jumped slightly as Phynis poked her in the side.
“Sistina, what sort of guardians do you have?” the princess asked.
“I, ah, will go find that key. Thank you for the help, Sistina,” Farlon spoke, obviously embarrassed, but his wide eyes flickered over the map of lights.
Sistina nodded, and Desa listened to her speak, each word coming haltingly, as if the genius loci was condensing a concept into a single word, and trying to communicate it only with difficulty. She pointed at the beginning, where the adventurers were. “Plants. Vines. Pitcher… plants. Burning plants. Traps. Wolves. Bears.”
Pointing farther down, she continued. “Bees. Wasps. Ants. Big.”
“How big?” Phynis asked patiently, and Sistina seemed confused for a moment before holding her hands out, about three feet across, and the princess asked, “All of them?”
“No. Ants. Wasps, bees.” Her hands came closer together about a foot apart, and Desa’s skin crawled at the idea of wasps the size of rats!
“Those seem unpleasant. Any others?” Phynis frowned, looking at the diagram.
Shaking her head, Sistina pointed at the bottom of the complex. “Foundry. Old. Forgotten. Learning. Golems.”
At that, Desa’s eyes widened enormously, as she almost squeaked out, “You’re going to build golems?”
Sistina looked puzzled as both women looked at her in astonishment, and her voice was questioning. “…Yes?”
* * *
“This is new,” Darak said, staring at the stone wall of
the chamber with a frown.
This was their third delve so far, and it had gone fairly well. A few different insects had appeared, including a nasty looking wasp, but they’d dealt with them without too much difficulty. Once they knew what to expect out of a dungeon, it was much easier to deal with. Though the strangling vine that had crept up on Nirath in the middle with a fight with one of the flower-girls had been a much less pleasant surprise. For the first time since they’d entered the dungeon, Penelope’s crossbow had actually gotten some use.
“Of course it’s new. We haven’t gotten this far before,” Joseph replied, wiping away some sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief.
“No, no, you’re not understanding, Joe. This stone wall is newer than all the others we’ve been through,” Darak corrected, his voice flat. “And it goes down. All the others must be years, if not decades old. This one isn’t more than a month old.”
“How do you know?” Penelope asked curiously, frowning at the wall. “I noticed the difference in the color, but I thought it might be a slightly different type of stone.”
“Nah, the stone is all the same thus far. Mostly granite. No, the difference is actually the mold. This doesn’t have much growing on it, and that should be something all of you can see,” Darak explained, shaking his head. “My advantage is Shale. We’re looking at it together, and we can see that the working is so new it hasn’t really settled into place yet.”
“Is it safe to pass through?” Nirath asked, looking at the ceiling of the tunnel warily.
“Oh, not that sort of not settled. Don’t worry, this tunnel is as solid as the mountain itself. The dungeon did good work on that part,” Darak told her with a grin, patting the side of the tunnel happily. “No, it’s more… I don’t know how to explain it. Some spells can talk to rocks, and they have trouble thinking quickly, for lack of a better term. So they don’t get used to a new position very fast either. And Shale can sense that.”
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