Chapter 14: Enter The Dungeon

No giant insects attacked us on the way to the cave, a state of affairs I was rather enjoying. Yet, it was a little worrisome that Lane had called it a dungeon. No idea what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. Stone walls with iron chains attached, bone saws and dirty knives, thumbscrews and iron maidens came to mind.

Walking alongside me, Marci said, “What do you think about Bent and Dylan?”

They were ahead of us, chatting away, Dylan reached up and touched Bent on the back, then let his hand drop.

I stepped over a thick root sticking out of the ground, “I’m curious to see whatever spells are. Bent said he was getting ready to cast one.”

Marci stepped on it lightly, then jumped a little and landed on the path, leaving green grasses swaying for a bit, “I meant their, uhm, being together. Now we’re on mission, that is, with relationships generally frowned upon.”

“Doesn’t really bother me. This mission is unlike any I’ve heard of. I’m much more concerned with us surviving.” I pushed aside an errant branch, letting it swing back as I walked past.

“Me either, bother me that is. But me too, in the uh, us surviving aspect.” Looking into my eyes, she gave me a warm smile, “Glad you feel that way.”

“That I’m worried we’re all going to die?”

Her blond locks bounced as she laughed. “I meant about them being together. Openly now. I think they’ve been dating a while now.”

“What, really?”

“They’re both pilots and the same rank, so yeah.”

“That makes more sense, then. I thought maybe it was the danger driving them together. But, honestly, I wasn’t paying too much attention before. I concentrated on my studies, trying to finish off the PhD reading. Well, that’s not really true. I was trying to decide what to focus on, academia or officer training, and the officer path seemed to offer the best future. Though I wasn’t expecting to lead an away mission so soon, you know.”

“None of us expected Tak to die.” She took my hand and squeezed softly. “I didn’t know you were thinking of remaining an officer.”

I squeezed back. “Yeah. I haven’t been getting along with my supervisor much. She never reads what I send her, never offers feedback. I mean, she’s more into the cultural aspects of arky and that just seems like so much fluff.”

“Being an officer might be better than working in fast food.”

“My dreams, how you crush them! But, yeah, I’m a little worried about that.” Still holding her hand, I started us moving along the path. “So, back to our previous convo, our green skinned barbarians seem to be doing the couple thing, too.” Another wayward branch brushed across my face, and when I ducked to get out of the way, pushing it away, our hands separated.

“They do seem to be enjoying each other’s company.” Marci blinked prettily, her long eyelashes catching my attention, “That just leaves you and me.”

“That last remaining single people? I guess, I guess it does.” I looked away, down the path, checking for more branches, up at the sky to watch puffy clouds drifting by, then down at my feet, one in front of the other, before back up to the little elf.

“Uhm, yeah. Just us.” Marci rolled her eyes. “Anyway, what do you think about the undead Lane was talking about.”

“Zombies? Ghosts? I don’t know. Seems a bit far-fetched. And creepy.”

“Creepier than human eating centipedes?”

“Eating centipedes.” Dodging around a bunch of spikey bushes, I said, “I’m trying not to think about that. It was strange enough to have them for dinner, but today’s breakfast, that was too much.”

“Fred was using one of the mandibles as a toothpick this morning.”

“That’s on brand lately.”

Marci shrugged, “I thought they tasted pretty good.”

“Probably better than zombies will.”

Marci’s eyes squished shut, her face scrunched up, “Gross.”

I shrugged, “You brought it up.”

“River,” Lane said, coming back down the trail, “we’re almost at the entrance. It’s just up ahead, on this path. I will be returning to the village.” He stopped.

I stopped. “Alright. Thank you for bringing us here. We appreciate it.” I stuck my hand out and shook his. “I hope your village prospers.”

“Thank you. I hope to see you healthy and returned to the village soon, too. Remember, the dungeon is trapped and full of danger. Be careful.”

“We will. You take care, Lane.”

As Lane turned his footsteps, crunching over the small pebbles on the dirt path, back to the village, I faced Marci, “Traps? What do you think that means?”

“Pitfalls?” She brushed hair off her brow. “Shooting darts like in the movies? Mantraps? Maybe a giant boulder, even!”

“We’ll move slowly. Wait.” I stopped, looked around, found what I was thinking of and headed toward it. A young tree, no more than two meters tall, thin enough trunk to grasp in one hand. “Hey, do we have a saw or something?”

“There’ll be a wire cutter in your backpack. The pocket under the first aid kit.”

I dug around until pulling it out. It was a thick cable made of smaller wires woven together, making a ribbed pattern, with two handles on each end. I put it around the tree and started pulling back and forth.

“You’re making a probing stick?”

“Yeah. I figure we can push it against the ground ahead of us. Maybe it’ll find trip wires and false floors.”

She laughed. “Maybe trip wires, but you’ll only be setting the trap off from a distance. Pit traps might be weight gated, so that won’t do anything.”

“I don’t know. It’s better than nothing. Plus,” I tipped my head in her direction, “I can poke stuff.”

Looking up at me, Marci covered her mouth, but kept her eyes half-lidded and playful, “Oh, I believe you.”

“Hey,” said Ave, walking up to us, “what’re you guys doing?”

“Cutting this sapling to use as a-”

Ave grabbed the trunk above and below where I was sawing, her green muscles bulging, and she tore the top away from my sawing position..

As she began tearing off its little branches, I said, “I definitely, you know, cut it most of the way.”

In long strips, Ave tore away the bark, leaving it glistening in the sunlight, “I couldn’t have done it without you, Boss.”

“Yup,” said Marci, “just a few more hours and you’ve have cut through that tree for sure.”

“I figure two, maybe three hours tops. I nearly had it! Man, Ave, you are so strong. Let me guess, points into strength?”

“Yup!” She passed me the now smooth sapling. “And training with Fred.”

I took it. “Thank you. Seriously. Now, let’s go find that cave.”

***

It was much, much larger than I’d imagined. A huge cave mouth spacious enough to hold a small hotel. Water dripped down from above and a little creek meandered out of it, running down the hill.

“This is big enough to live in.” The little elf brushed her hair, taking in the enormous cavern.

“I hope no one is living here.”

Marci’s eyes moved from the cave to me, “Just the computers Lane said he saw. And the thing he called ‘the core.’ I wonder how deep it goes?”

She and I were the last to arrive. Having seen enough, the others started making their way inside and were passing some fallen boulders near the entrance. I cupped my hands, calling out, “Guys! Remember, Lane said there are traps here!”

Bent yelled back, “Probably not at the entrance!”

“Alright. Let’s catch up. And follow in their footsteps just in case.”

“To avoid the traps? Good thinking. You know, River, this doesn’t look very dungeon-like. It looks much more like a natural cave.”

My eyes needed a moment to adjust from sunlight to shade as I took a step in. Immediately the game sound went off, the voice saying:

QUEST UNLOCKED! CAPTURE THE DUNGEON CORE. THIS QUEST IS VERY DANGEROUS. A BALANCED PARTY IS RECOMMENDED.

Ahead of Marci and me, the rest of the party had stopped. We must all have gotten the message at the same time. “Shit. Very dangerous? Balanced party?”

“I wonder what that means.”

“Hey, Bent! Any idea what ‘balanced party’ means?”

He shouted something back, but I couldn’t quite hear him, so cupped my ears.

He shouted louder, “Probably a healer and a trapper!”

Marci brushed up against my arm, “We have neither of those.”

“Yeah. Let’s catch up to the group and discuss our options.”

Entering the cave immediately felt cool. The humidity was refreshing. As we moved in further, the sounds of the forest, grass and leaves blowing in the wind, birds and insects calling, faded away, the steady drip-drip-drip of the water grew louder, our teammates footsteps crackling over loose rock, the tinkling sound of shale being kicked. Deeper in, conical stone rose from the ground reaching up to their twins protruding from the ceiling.

I said over my shoulder, “You think this cave was here before the nanotech took over?”

“I’d guess yes. Stalactites and stalagmites take a long time to form. Though the nanobots can probably mimic them. We’d have to drill into the rocks to see how they were formed, by deposition or all at once. The thing is, the machines would have to alter everything about the environment, or this cave would be eroding, collapsing. So, it’s probably natural.”

“That makes sense.” Given the size, that we were making our way through it, I felt a little silly carrying this sapling. What was I going to use it for? Seemed like a good idea at the time. I passed it to my left hand, to give my right a break.

“Hey,” said Marci, stumbling on some loose rock, “I don’t like this. Something’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

She stopped, turned, grasping her arms tightly, almost hugging herself, “I’m just, I don’t know, I can’t put a finger on it. Uncomfortable.”

“Is there something here? Did you see something?”

“No, no, it’s not that. I just feel, I don’t know, a crushing feeling against me, like something is holding me down. But I’m breathing normally.”

“Here,” taking her hand, placing my fingers on her wrist, I paused, counting. “Your heart rate is elevated.”

“I can feel it. Sorry, I’ll calm down, get it under control. Let’s just keep going.”

Her eyes had lost all mirth, but she flashed her best smile at me anyways. We couldn’t lose her. If there was something in this cave hurting her, we’d have to abort. Giving her wrist a little squeeze, I said, “I’m a little worried. If this gets worse, let me know? We’ll abandon this quest and find some other place that has the info we need.”

“Yeah. Thanks, River. Will do.”

As we moved further and further into the cave, every sound giving off a slight and flat echo that made the silence all the more profound, and our teammate’s voices reached us.

Fred’s deep bass, saying, “It’d be awesome to have a house here! We could damn up that creek for fresh water, maybe even have fish in it. The place is defensible.”

Bent’s higher pitched voice, “You want to live in a cave? A dangerous cave? We have a place in town.”

As Marci and I stepped near the creek, their voices were lost to its waters. Trickling around rocks, little air pockets making bubbling and popping sounds, tiny waterfalls trickling down, it was perhaps half a meter wide, and perfectly clear. “I bet this is safe to drink.”

“Probably.”

Dylan shouting back to us – the others were making better time and much further in – “Hey! It narrows here.”

I couldn’t see who exactly, but two of them broke out their flashlights. We caught up to the group shortly, near the end of the giant cave. The rubble at the bottom made the wall appear to curve upward.

“What do you think, Boss?” asked Fred.

As we got closer, I could see a smaller, almost doorway sized, pathway that seemed cut into the wall. The passageway moved alongside the wall for a bit before veering off into darkness.