《One Hell Of A Fall》


 Chapter 1

    ¡°What the hell is a level 40 monster doing here??!!¡± Jay yelled running back, the Monster, (you can think of it as a bear with extra-long claws) it swung its arm at Franz, the teams¡¯ double hander, there was a crack, as bone gave way and Franz fell back, just as Boris jumped in, shield raised. The monster lifted its claw and brought it down on the shield with a force that made the floor shake, and everyone¡¯s teeth rattle, then there was a pause, as Boris looked at his ruined shield, and the monster looked at Boris. Maria and I (yes, I am here too) had grabbed Franz while this was going on, and were making a hasty retreat. Well as hasty as anyone can while carrying someone as large as Franz, behind us I could hear pained breathing, but I couldn¡¯t tell if they were from the monster or Boris!


    As we staggered back towards the dungeon entrance, I pulled a potion from my inventory, that is my job after all, and poured it down Franz¡¯s throat. It won¡¯t make him walk again, but it will stop the bleeding at least. We were out, I felt dizzy, and out of breath, but we were out! And there was Jay, a few metres from the entrance leaning on a tree, clearly out of breath. I was glad to see he had gotten out at least, Maria was less pleased; ¡°You bloody coward, why¡¯d you turn and run like that?!¡±  she yelled, leaving Franz and I panting by the entrance ¡°what was I supposed to do? I¡¯m a mage not a knight! I don¡¯t have any stopping power!¡± Franz tugged at my sleeve diverting my attention, he was looking a bit green, and when he spoke it was in a muted voice, ¡°have you ever seen something like that in there before?¡± ¡°No¡± I said looking back towards the dungeon entrance, ¡°No it shouldn¡¯t be possible¡± ¡°in that case¡± Franz had a sharp intake of breath as he tried to get up, ¡°we had better move away from here, if it didn¡¯t originate in there it can get out, and we need to report this too!¡±


    Every dungeon has a core, in fact you could say that the core is the dungeon. All cores are made of compressed magic and can be found in some high-level creatures, but a dungeon core is slightly different, it seems to have a consciousness on some level, and when it feels threatened, it produces monsters to protect itself, the size of the core determines, the level and number of monsters it can make.


    It was evening and I was cooking as the light began to fade, the guild had sent a high-level team to investigate the dungeon, and they hadn¡¯t come back yet. With Boris gone, presumed¡­ dead, and Franz laid out for at least a fortnight, the party was basically disbanded, and I was out of a job, again. I was the inventory so I was always ¡®out of a job¡¯. What is an inventory? Well, it is an interdimensional space that you can put stuff in. But there is a catch; you need manna to use it. Effectively anything you put into the inventory shrinks your manna pool, the bigger the object, the more manna it takes out of your pool. Of cause, as soon as you take anything out of your inventory your manna pool gets bigger again. This leads to a problem when forming parties, (as the lion¡¯s share of exp goes to the person who lands the killing strike,) mages don¡¯t want to waste manna on inventory stuff when they could use it on spells. Warriors, and most other classes, don¡¯t want to waste precious skill points on a large manna pool that is otherwise useless to them. There is however a solution; find someone who has a useless class, and get them to be the inventory¡­ that¡¯s me. I turned the meat on the fire, one side was already slightly burned, while the other wasn¡¯t even close to cooked yet, I sighed; a year ago I had been so optimistic, so convinced that when I got my class I would be away; climbing levels, slinging spells, or maybe blazing a trail with my sword to greater hights, that¡¯s not what happened. I half smiled at my past naivety. On my 14<sup>th</sup> birthday I had walked into the temple, secretly convinced that I was going to leave with something special, and in a way, I did; illusionist is a rare class less than 1 in 100,000 have it. Now illusionist sounds kind of cool, but it isn¡¯t, oh it is rare, but I can¡¯t affect the real world at all, and when you are fighting monsters, you really need to affect the real world. I got tired of waiting for it to cook through and just cut the cooked meat off the uncooked and started eating it. I had told my father that I wasn¡¯t coming home, I was the youngest after all; nothing for me at home. I had thought ¡®maybe I can make it work, utilize illusions in a way no one has thought of yet¡¯ but I hadn¡¯t! Luckily being a mage type, I had a fairly large manna pool to start with, so about a month after I got my class I took my first job as an inventory, and it wasn¡¯t so bad, most of the time.


    Knock, knock, knock. I opened one eye and looked at the curtains; it was hardly light, Knock, knock, I rubbed my other eye and struggled out of bed, ¡®what time was it?¡¯ ¡°Coming¡± I pulled on some cloths as I went to the door and open it, Amy, the guild master¡¯s daughter, was standing on the other side, ¡°At last! Do you know how long I have been standing here?¡± She had a look of; ¡®I¡¯m really annoyed, but I am controlling it¡¯ without waiting for me to answer her question she continued, ¡°Father wants you for something,¡± I ducked back inside to grab my coat, and Amy¡¯s voice travelled after me ¡°he said it was urgent!¡± I grubbed the coat and then paused, it was petty, and it wasn¡¯t a good use of manna, but the temptation was just too great, ¡°I won¡¯t be a minute¡± I said, pulling a coin out of my pocket, then I concentrated on the image I wanted and cast ¡®Imitate¡¯; now the coin looked like a spider, just a little bigger than my palm. It wasn¡¯t the best I had ever done, but in this half-light it would do just fine. I bent down as if to tie my shoe lace and sent the coin rolling out the door ahead of me; a second later there was a scream. Concealing my smile, I walked out the door. The trip to the guild was a quite one; Amy wasn¡¯t wanting to talk to me after the arachnid incident, not that she was very chatty to me at the best of times, and it was too early for anyone to be up. Abor is enough of a back water that it has no night life, the only people who come here are adventures interested in the dungeon, but it isn¡¯t high level enough to draw many. I sighed; wondering what the guild master could want to see me for? Amy led the way into the guild master¡¯s office, it was a neat room with heavy looking furniture, the guild master sat behind his large desk, and on the other side sat two people, who had to be adventures. I did not have an inspection skill so I couldn¡¯t tell what level, or class they were, but even without the inspection skill, I could tell, these two were high level, when the level difference is enough; you can feel it. ¡°Here at last!¡± the guild master said, hardly sparing me a glance before turning back to the adventures, ¡°As I was saying, this young man was in the party that¡­ err, discovered the, ahem, problem. And the men that I sent to investigate have not returned, so I can only assume that it really is serious.¡± The female adventurer, turned her head and gave me a brief smile. The man got up from his seat and said; ¡°Well Magnolia, if you are ready, I am quite keen to get started!¡± He gave the guild master a stiff bow, and as if it was an afterthought said, ¡°unless there is anything else, Guild Master?¡± ¡°No, no, not at all.¡± The guild master said hurriedly, Magnolia arose with a sigh, ¡°you are always in such a hurry¡± I followed them out the door. We picked up Tom, (Xxavier¡¯s inventory) he came hurrying towards us; tripping over his own feet and almost losing some of the healing potions he was carrying. Tom came to a stop in front of us and his face lit up with a grin, ¡°are you the other inventory?¡± he asked eagerly, I nodded ¡°do you have room for some of these?¡± he asked holding up the bottles that were trying to escape his grasp, I nodded again, and started putting them into my inventory, Xxavier frowned ¡°Running low on space, Tom?¡± ¡°Oh, no more than usual sir, it is just that they don¡¯t have the highest-grade potions here, so I got a few extra. I hope that is alright?¡± Xxavier waved a hand, dismissing such details; ¡°whatever you like, let¡¯s just get a move on!¡± And that is how I came to be back at the dungeon entrance, I hadn¡¯t thought that I would see it again for a few days, or even weeks; but situations change very quickly! ¡°So here we are¡± Xxavier said looking at the entrance ¡°single handed sword Tom¡± he held out his hand as Tom pulled it out of his inventory, ¡°how far in were you when you came across those¡­ beasts?¡± Xxavier asked as he gave the sword a few flourishes, ¡°not very far¡± I answered ¡°just over 200 Invar¡¯s*¡± {* An Invar is a unit of measure derived from the amount of space in an inventory equal to 25 manna points} Xxavier nodded, then gave a slight bow to Magnolia ¡°would you care to go first?¡± Magnolia raised her chin ¡°why do your gentlemanly manners only ever present themselves when faced with a dark hole in the ground, and never in good society!¡± ¡°I¡¯ll take that as a no then.¡± Xxavier said smoothly as he walked into the dungeon, we followed. There is no need for a lantern in dungeons; as you get walk in the light drops, like any cave, but then only a few invars in and the first thin veins of manna begin to form on the walls, giving of a faint florescent light, the deeper you go the thicker the veins get, and the brighter, or it should have. As we progressed deeper the veins still glowed but everything seemed dimmer then normal, of cause that may have been my imagination; seeing the dungeon as a darker, scarier place. But what was not my imagination was the lack of resistance we encountered; the place was eerily quiet, there was no sign of the overgrown rats or moles that the dungeon usually sent to intercept intruders. Xxavier led on, slowly, but steadily pressing deeper into the ghostly dungeon. It happened a little past the point we had met the monster before, and it happened fast! It came from above. One moment we were walking along, and the next, a monster was falling on top of Xxavier, I don¡¯t know if it was a skill, or if he just had a lot of points in agility, but he moved faster than the eye could follow; darting forward and out of the way. The monster; seeing that Xxavier was out of reach swung it¡¯s claw at Magnolia, who was basically standing next to it, she ducked with no room to spare, the claw struck and lodged in the dungeon wall and then, Xxavier used a skill; his sword glowed as he swung it and a wave of energy seemed to run off the blade and into the monster, the force was so great that it dislodged the monster from the wall and sent it sprawling on the floor! Xxavier was smirking as he jumped forward with his sword raised above his head. The force of impact, when he brought it down, made the dungeon shake, and that is not a figure of speech; I know, because the ground in front of Tom and I had cracks running through it, ¡°you have levelled up, level 5 reached,¡± a disembodied voice notified me, and that is when the floor under me gave way!


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 Chapter 2

    Have you ever had one of those nightmares, where you are falling; and all you can do is wait for impact, but each second drags on without you hitting anything, then suddenly; slam! You smash into the ground and you are awake? Well, I was falling, and let me tell you, those nightmares don¡¯t even come close; every second it was as if someone where plucking a string, and every time it would send a wave of tension over me, making me relive a fantom impact. And then came the impact, it was bad, I blacked out almost immediately, but I knew it was bad!


    I came round to a black world, a black world with a red pulsing to it, that meant I was low on hp, really low, ¡®stats¡¯ the thought brought up a window, showing health, manna, and stamina, health showed 2 out of 70, I felt a moments panic; this was the closest to death I had ever come! Struggling to concentrate, I managed to pull a healing potion out of my inventory, it was at that moment that I realised how painful moving was, I don¡¯t know how long it took me to drink the potion, but eventually, with great effort I got it down, then waited as the freezing, burning, sensation began to run through me; soon I would be able to move without blacking out, it would probably take a few hours before I could move without any pain, but I was out of immediate danger. In the darkness to my left, something growled. I turned my head and stared into the darkness; I could see nothing. And I mean nothing! I couldn¡¯t even tell if my eyes were open or closed for all the difference it made! The noise came again, but it sounded different now. Less of a growl and  more of a groan, I raised a shaking hand and flared some manna, it came out as a misty cloud glowing ever so faintly,(it was hopelessly inefficient and you would struggle to read by the light it gave off, but it was the only thing I had) I sent the cloud out in the direction the sound had come from, it revealed a shadowy world; where I couldn¡¯t be sure if what I saw was shadow or substance. I stood for a while trying to make sense of it, then the groan came again, and like one of those optical illusions that seem so obvious after you make sense of them, I recognised what was in front of me; ¡°Tom!¡± I pulled out a potion as I stumbled towards him, pain rushing through my legs as I moved, I stopped next to him; fumbled to get the cork out, got it out at last, right then my excess manna run out and we were plunged into darkness once more. Sometime had passed since I found Tom and poured the healing potion down his throat. I wasn¡¯t sure how much, there was nothing to go off except my perception. I was sitting in the dark a little way off from Tom, surrounded by the pungent smell of fungus, it had been present ever since we arrived, but I hadn¡¯t noticed it until now; too preoccupied with not dying. In the darkness Toms breathing had settled, it was just a matter of time now before he woke up, my manna hadn¡¯t recovered yet, so I couldn¡¯t ¡®look around¡¯ anymore, I was stuck waiting in the darkness with nothing to do, and then I remembered ¡®I had levelled up!¡¯ With a thought I opened my menu here is what I saw;


    Health 70                                         Strength 5                                        Spells;


    Manna 110                                       Agility 7                                            Imitate level 1


    Stamina 30                                      Vitality 4                                            Distort level 1


    ¡®You have reached level 5, you have 2 remaining skill points¡¯


    (This is an explanation of the table above; Health: in Alba Health is really just an expression of how hardy your constitution is; in other words, how well, you would take being punched, poisoned, or falling through a dungeon floor, if someone were to cut your head off you would die, if you had 5 or 500 Health point wouldn¡¯t make any difference. Manna: an expression of how much magic you have access too, also determines inventory size; the more stuff in your inventory the less available manna. Stamina: in most classes this is what is expended in order to use skills, if you have no skills that use it is still used in a similar way to adrenaline; i.e., it boosts strength, agility, and vitality, slightly. Strength: pretty self-explanatory. Agility: how fast you can move, how coordinated you are. Vitality: how fast you naturally recover; Health, Manna, and Stamina. Spell: Imitate; imitate this lets you make one object look like another object. Spell: Distort; this is not an optical spell- it doesn¡¯t change the appearance of anything- this is auditory; it distorts sounds, making them unrecognisable.   Skill points: Skill points are awarded at level up; 1 skill point is worth 10 point in Health, Manna, and Stamina. 1 skill point is worth 1 point in Strength, Agility, and Vitality. You can also level up a spell, - if you have enough skill points- or acquire a new- random- spell. Available spells depend on your level.)


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    I had received the imitate spell when I got my class, and had spent a skill point to get distort when I had first levelled up, back when I still thought I was going to become some badass adventurer, after that reality had hit and every other level up had gone into my manna pool; boring but sadly practical. Level 5 was the first time I had gotten 2 skill points, the training manual that I had read called level 5 ¡®the end of the early levels¡¯ because you got 2 skill point from levels 5 to 10, but you needed more XP to level up. I gave a brittle smile in the darkness; it had taken me more than a year to get through the ¡®easy¡¯ levels, Oh brilliant. I am not sure how long I sat there in the darkness trying to decide where to put those 2 skill points; I wanted to get more spells, but I had wanted that before I had fallen through the floor, and so I found myself wondering if my desire was interfering with my judgment. Then again, having seen Xxavier move I could definitely see an advantage to having high agility, on the other hand my vitality was pretty low, at the same time I had a lot of health potions in my inventory, and fast recovery wasn¡¯t going to help me if I didn¡¯t survive an encounter¡­ this carried on until I started to get angry at myself; everything needed more skill points in it, but I only had 2, I needed to work out what would benefit me the most. Then the absurdity of it hit me; out there in the darkness there could be anything, more of those level 40 bear monsters, a creature that level might have an agility stat over 100! And here I was sitting in the darkness wondering what to put my 2 skill points into, as if it would make a difference if anything happened, and with that cheerful thought I put 1 into agility and 1 into a new spell. The new spell that I got was; Fear level 1: Monsters up to level 3 feel a strong sense of unease when you cast this spell on them and may flee. This spell does not, at current level, have any effect on humans, or creatures with a high sensitivity to manna. This spell does not, at current level, have any effect on creatures over level 3. Manna cost 15.  I read through it twice, then rested my forehead on my knees, why couldn¡¯t it have been something useful? Why? I didn¡¯t know what I was going to meet down here, but I was pretty sure it wasn¡¯t going to be below level 3!


    It is hard to measure time when you are underground, without any constant to base it off. I would guess it was about an hour after I gave Tom the potion that he woke up. His voice sounded small and a bit dopy, ¡°Where am I?¡± I wasn¡¯t entirely sure of this myself, so I said ¡°Somewhere below the dungeon. In some kind of chasm, or¡­ shaft¡­¡± ¡°Oh¡­ Did you know this was under the dungeon?¡± I sighed inwardly ¡°not until we fell through it! No.¡± ¡°Oh¡­¡± Tom said shifting around in the darkness, ¡°Don¡¯t move around, there is nothing to see and I don¡¯t know if the floor is safe!¡± Tom¡¯s ¡°oh¡± came back; ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you have a variance crystal in your inventory?¡± [Variance crystals give off light when charged with manna,] ¡°No. I don¡¯t normally carry any when exploring dungeons, with the manna veins giving off light I have never seen the need before now.¡±  ¡°Oh Brilliant.¡±  I said under my breath, ¡°I have something that might help though!¡± There were sounds in the darkness, like Tom was searching through his pockets, then a very small sneeze, and a second later a tiny flame appeared, almost like Tom had struck a match. Tom grinned at me in this new found light, and held up a small, red, and brown striped rodent, ¡°this is Red, my pet fire mouse.¡± He said, then, seeing my surprise added ¡°my class is Monster tamer.¡±

 Chapter 3

    I coughed as the foul-smelling smoke caught in the back of my throat; it came from the mushrooms we were using to keep the fire going. Tom had sent his other pet, a ferret named Scar, to look for fuel, and mushrooms was all he had brought back, they were awful; they smouldered rather than burned. And they filled the air with the foulest smell I had ever met! ¡°This is just like in the old legends!¡±  Tom said, cheerfully broking into my line of thought, I looked blankly at him across the fire, ¡°what is?¡± I asked ¡°This!¡± he gestured around us at the darkness, the vertical wall, and the spot to my right where the floor vanished again into some abyss, ¡°You know; ¡®The valiant hero, kicked out of society, finds a mysterious dungeon. He explores the dungeon and becomes super powerful, frees a vampire girl who has been trapped for hundreds of years, then returns just in time to save the world from some looming disaster!¡± there was a moments silence as I looked from our surroundings to him, then slowly, I said, ¡°if this were an old legend, one of us would have an awesome skill, and the other would be a beautiful girl. Secondly, we are not staying down here any longer than we can help, we are going to climb that wall back to the surface as soon as we have recovered enough to stand. And thirdly if any vampire shows up, we are getting as far away from it as we can as fast as we can!¡± I hoped that Tom got the message; I wanted to get out of here alive!


    A single rivulet of sweat ran down my face as I felt for another hand hold, maybe just to the left of me, I strained for it; my arms at full extension, I had a hand hold! And then I felt the wall give, I tightened my grip; and it crumbled to powder in my hand and I was falling¡­ again. When I landed Tom looked up at me from the fire he was trying to keep alight, I looked at him, the fall had been just long enough to wind me. ¡°How far did you get?¡± Tom asked, ¡°not even as far as last time!¡± I managed to gasp out. For the last few hours, we had been taking it in turns to try and climb the wall. It had not been going well; the wall was treacherous; it would take your wait for a few minutes of climbing, then it would give way and you would find yourself right back where you started. I struggled over to Tom and sat down to recover my breath, a moment later Scar appeared out of the darkness bringing a mushroom almost half his size with him. Scar deposited the mushroom at Toms feet and headed back off into the darkness. Tom added this latest prize to the other fungi that made up the fire. The smell of the fire had not gotten any better, and getting it to do any more than smoulder had proven impossible, looking at the sorry excuse of a fire I finally came to a conclusion I had been dreading; ¡°We aren¡¯t getting out of here by climbing that wall. I think we will have to try something else¡­¡± ¡°Oh, yes?¡± Tom said, seeming to brighten at the very idea ¡°do you have a plan?¡± ¡°yes¡± I said and indicated over my shoulder, to were the floor dropped away, ¡°I have a length of rope in my inventory, if we can find a way to secure it, we can climb down and look around.¡±


    I cut some pieces from the rope we had used to get down to the floor, and handed them to Tom, there was a pause as he got Red, his pet fire mouse, out of whatever pocket or nook he had been sleeping in. In the darkness there was a very small ¡®achoo¡¯ and a second later we had light again! The rope burned only slightly better than the fugus, but we could see, and what we could see was the remains of a battle: three large corpses. I could identify two of them as the bear like monsters we had met in the dungeon above, but these were in far worse condition; one was missing an arm and the leg below what I guessed was its knee, the other had had its chest crushed, (bits of the rib cage were sticking out) the other corpse was unlike anything I had seen before; it was large, very large, and low slung, like a lizard, and it¡¯s body seemed to be covered in scales or armer of some sort. The lizard¡¯s tale ended in a club bigger than my head, the lizards¡¯ head was damaged; I assumed by the bear monster. I found the sight unsettling, I had seen plenty of creatures die before in the dungeon, but in the dungeon the bodies would disappear in a matter of seconds; reabsorbed by the dungeon. To see the carnage left behind was unnerving. The room was large and, from what I could see, vaguely circular. A feeling of decay seemed to hang over it, the corpses added to this, but it was more than that; there were small piles of rubble at the base of the walls, mushrooms and toadstools grew everywhere but even the fungi seemed to be in the last stages of dying and were beginning to rot! ¡®What was this place? Why was it here?¡¯ the questions I had been too preoccupied to think about up till now began to surface ¡°Hey look at this!¡± Toms exited voice filled the room with echoes, hoping against reason that he didn¡¯t attract anything that might want to kill us, I went to see what he had found; it was a passage, or it had been a passage, it had fallen in and now was a pile of rubble, what remained was an archway; and it gave me the creeps: it had the right shape to it, but it didn¡¯t look right to me, I didn¡¯t get a chance to work out why it didn¡¯t look right because Tom had already found another passage just a little further on, and this one actually went somewhere, and Tom seemed very keen to find out where. So, feeling uneasy I followed. We walked down that passage, and then down the next passage, the only thing we met were some Cave Mites; [About the size of my fist, Cave Mites have 10 legs encircling the body, the adventures¡¯ journal calls them ¡®the herbivore of spiders¡¯] this passages were strange too, but at least I worked out why by now; they were very nearly caves, the walls, ceiling, floor, everything you could see, was cave like, but the shape was that of a passage, as if they had been made them! We carried on; we started past more places where the walls were starting to come apart, leaving little piles of rubble. The smell from the ubiquitous mushrooms filling the air adding to the strange ambience of the place, I began to think that the passages might carry on forever; that we might end up wondering in them until we ran out of food, and it was then that we met the giant lizard blocking the passage way up ahead.


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    I was at a loss as to why the lizard didn¡¯t attack us. It had clearly been a match for those bear monsters, so we could hardly be considered a challenge, but after a long minute had passed, and we were still breathing, I began to relax a little and think. And then I realised what had happened; the lizard had gotten its leg stuck when some of the tunnel wall collapsed and now it couldn¡¯t move to attack us! It was stuck, any attempt to free itself only bringing more of the wall down! ¡°Well, I guess we aren¡¯t going that way.¡± I said turning to go back the way we had come, ¡°we should kill it!¡± Tom said before, I turned back; wondering how long it would take for Toms¡¯ hero delusions to get us both killed! Tom must have seen that I wasn¡¯t sold on the idea because he continued; ¡°it¡¯s trapped, it would be kinder to kill it now than leave it to waste away over time. And then there is the experience points! Besides it must be weak after having that wall fall on it.¡± I hated to admit it but he did have a point. It is not every day that you get the opportunity to take out something that is 5 times your level, or more, presents itself. There was only one problem: how? ¡°Do you have anything in your inventory that would penetrate that?¡± I asked looking at the lizards¡¯ armoured scales, ¡°Oh, well¡­ maybe?¡± Tom pulled a rapier out of his inventory and handed it to me. I stood holding it for a second wondering how best to proceed, then I thought, ¡®to hell with it!¡¯ and just thrust it at the lizards¡¯ side; it was like hitting rock, the rapier bounced off the lizards¡¯ scales vibrating like a tuning fork, or maybe the shock just made my arm feel like it was vibrating. The point is it didn¡¯t work! ¡®We may need a different approach¡­¡¯

 Chapter 4

    The noise that the lizard let out was enough to perforate eardrums, I quickly jammed the toadstool that was stuck on the end of the rapier down its throat, and the sound was instantly muffled. Tom had suggested lighting a fire underneath it and cooking it alive, I had objected; it seemed unnecessarily cruel, and on a more practical note, we didn¡¯t have the fuel to keep a fire going for that long. This had led to my idea of feeding it toadstools in the hope that we could poison it! The lizard hadn¡¯t taken this idea very well at all, and in the end, Tom had had to resort to burning it with our make shift rope candles (which we were going through all too fast) just to get it to open its mouth, while I shoved fungi down its throat with my oversized skewer! And it worked! Or at least it worked, sort of; after the fifth skewer full the creature passed out. As I have said, time was very hard to calculate down there. I do not know how long we waited for the lizard to die. Tom fell asleep almost immediately. We had put the ¡®torches¡¯ out to save them, so I sat alone in the darkness with the lizards shallow breathing, and my thoughts drifted; I thought about last year, and then farther back; about my siblings and my mother, running round the village, and somewhere around this point I must have dozed, wondering into that place between sleeping and waking, because my father broke in on my peaceful memory; frowning in that slightly disapproving, slightly disappointed way he so often did wherever I was concerned. I tried to shove him to the side of my mind, so I could return to my pleasant memory, but I had strayed to near dreaming and had lost control of the phantom. He looked at me and the world seemed to fade around him ¡°I always said you should give up this silly idea of adventuring, that it would lead you to a bad end. Why couldn¡¯t you have given this up when your class came through?¡± I felt the anger coming back then, the anger that had stopped me from ¡®giving it up¡¯ it pulled me from the dream, and I was back; sitting in the darkness who knew how far from the surface, with the sounds of a dying lizard coming ever more softly. I woke Tom and we started a fire with the remaining fungi, the smell didn¡¯t seem as bad, or maybe I was just getting used to it. We had just gotten the fire going when the notifications came in; ¡®you have reached level 6, you have reached level 7, you have 4 remaining skill points.¡¯  I jumped to my feet; the feeling of success flooding through me. It is unfortunate that in my excitement I put out the fire, plunging us back into darkness. Tom tried to get the fire going again, but couldn¡¯t. He had levelled up too, but only one level, so it seemed that I had gotten the lion¡¯s share of experience from the kill. We were just settling down again to try and allocate our skill points when I thought I saw something in the darkness. Like those mirages of water in the desert, I thought I saw light! ¡°Do you see that?¡± I asked Tom, ¡°What? Where?¡± ¡°That down there¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know where you are looking.¡± ¡°I am going to go and see. I¡¯ll be back in a moment.¡± Stumbling and fumbling in the darkness I set off, fearing all the time that it was just my imagination playing tricks on me. It was not my imagination!  The tunnel turned curved round and then began to opened onto something huge; a great cavern, you it might even called it a subterranean world; there were the vague outlines of hills and land scape stretching out in front of me, but more important; there was light! It was only slightly better than a moonless night, but to me it was brighter than a blazing summer day. Far off to my left, in the distant wall, a manna vein ran through the rock. It filled me with a strange mix of jubilation, terror, excitement, and fear. There was light out there, glorious light, but it come from a manna thread and that meant a dungeon, a dungeon with who knew what in it. But it would be impossible to walk away, drawn to it by that light, drawn with such terrible- ¡°Hey! Have you seen this?¡± I turned back to find that Tom had followed me; couldn¡¯t he see I was having a dramatic moment here?! Apparently not! He was holding a smooth white rock, a little smaller than a chicken, and strangely uniform in shape, ¡°what is it?¡± I asked; ¡°Don¡¯t know. But there are a lot more of them over there!¡± I looked where he pointed; there where indeed a lot more of them. I looked back at the one in his hand, I was missing something, the cave went completely still, as if everything was holding its¡¯ breath, an uneasy feeling formed in the pit of my stomach. In the silence there was a scraping sound, and then a crack! It may not have been loud, but in the cave, it felt louder than thunder. And then it came to me, ¡°it¡¯s an egg!¡± I said, I looked back the way we had come; and the more I looked the more eggs I saw. What was worse they were starting to hatch! The first monster to escape its egg was a lizard, it looked around at its¡¯ newly discovered world with large liquid eyes. Those eyes settled on Tom and I and instantly seemed to fill with killing intent. On its own it wouldn¡¯t have been a problem, but here, with a cave full of hatching eggs, it was a problem! We turned and ran. Unfortunately, we didn¡¯t get far; the ground dropped gently away right where our passage joined the cavern, running into the cavern I had the unnerving feeling that the ground had disappeared and I face planted. I could hear the lizards swarming over the stone floor towards me, I rolled over, Tom was rushing back towards me, reaching down to help me, a lizard jumped out of the darkness and landed on his arm; he tried to shake it off and got a tail blow to the chin. He went down went down like a rag doll. There were more coming! I knew that, feeling panic rising I did the only thing I could think of; I cast fear. Under other circumstances the results would have been comical; the first lizard froze up in mid charge, so that the next lizard ran right into his tail, and like dominos a chain reaction occurred; lizards crashing into lizards, a pile up, and utter confusion. I struggled to my feet, and grabbed Tom, who was still out cold, I threw his lizard into the general confusion behind us, and started dragging him with me. It was hopeless, I realised that before I had stumbled three steps; with Toms¡¯ unconscious body there was no way we could out run our cold-blooded pursuers, even without him it was doubtful. I would keep casting my fear spell until I ran out of manna and then we would be killed, overran by the lizards, and for an absurd moment I found myself jealous of Toms unconscious state; at least he couldn¡¯t see what was coming! And then, a small, lean, humanoid shape threw itself into the lizards.


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 Chapter 5

    The ragged band of Goblins had surrounded Tom and I. They had made short work of the lizards using a crude spears and then they had turned their attention to us. It looked like we were going to end up dead by Goblin, rather than dead by stampeding lizard. The Goblins were about waist-high. With pale green skin and large, pointed ears. ¡°eXCusE mE¡± the Goblins parted a little bit to let the speaker through. He was also a goblin, but skinner than the others and with a misshaped head, ¡°eXcUse Me¡± he said again, ¡°buT wHAt arE You? AnD whErE haVe You CoMe fRom?¡± [he sounded like a boy whose voice had just started to break and is having difficulty with his pitch] What did he mean ¡®what are you?¡¯ was he actually asking another question, and had just gotten the wrong word? Feeling foolish I said ¡°Human¡­ I suppose. And we come from a little town in Alba.¡± The Goblin tilted his overlarge head to one side, as if he was as confused by this answer. ¡°WHerE iS tHiS, ALba?¡± ¡°Well¡­ you know¡­ up, on the surface.¡± I pointed up as if talking to a child. The effect that this badly constructed sentence had on the goblins was quite amazing. A ripple of chatter seemed to run through them, and an argument started up out of nowhere. Meanwhile the ¡®spokes¡¯ Goblin¡¯s eyes seemed to light up. ¡°I sAy wE Kill theM nOw.¡± One of the Goblins in the crowd said. The ¡®spokes¡¯ Goblin turned and glared at him, ¡°NO, wE Must takE THem baCk to SEe tHE OLd One!¡± The goblin that was in favour of killing us muscled his way forward, ¡°You cAn¡¯T serIOuslY beliEvE Him!¡± He gave me a scornful nod, ¡°EvEryone knOWs tHat THe surfAcE doEsn¡¯t actUAlly ExIst. It iS a thiNG oUt oF oLd TalEs, aNd cHildreNs storEys. A placE wiTh nO wALls, wHat keEps The rOof uP?!¡± The spokes Goblin glared at him. He glared with such intensely that he took a step back, ¡°True oR nOt TRue tHe Old ONe wiLl wanT to spEak tO tHem. We tAke tHEm baCk!¡±


    Tom had finally woken up. I was glad because he was heavy, and I was tired of carrying him. In fact a part of me was regretting saving him at all. If I had just left his unconscious body for the lizards, maybe I wouldn¡¯t be in this mess now! Tom, strolling along next to me he seemed completely unaware of the danger we were in. I, on the other hand was painfully aware that we could be walking to our termination. This could all go so wrong, so quickly. Killed by goblins in some deep forgotten hole. That seemed like an all to likely end. But even then, I saw it, like the half-imagined light in the darkness; an idea. A crazy idea, a complete long shot. But still worth a chance. I opened my menu: ¡®you have 4 skill points remaining¡¯ I spent 2 skill points to level up my imitate skill to level 2, and hoped that it would be enough. ¡°Where is Scar?¡± I whispered to Tom. Tom seemed to do a thousand-mile stare into the landscape around us before answering ¡°To our right and slightly behind us. Why?¡± I ignored the question ¡°Can you bring him to the bridge of that hill,¡± I pointed with my chin in front and to our right, ¡°I want to try something but I need line of sight.¡± ¡°Ok. Are you going to tell me, or is it a surprise?¡± Tom grinned. I tried to match his confident tone, ¡°I think I will keep it a surprise for now!¡± ¡°Ok suit yourself.¡± We had nearly walked right past Scar before I spotted him, sitting as still as the rocks around him. I mentally attached my spell to Scar and then focused on the image I wanted; one of the lizards. I pictured it in as much detail as I could recall and then finished casting the spell. I let us walk a little further before whispering to Tom ¡°All set! If you can get Scar to attack one of the Goblins we might be able to get away in the confusion.¡± Tom looked a bit doubtful, but went along with it anyway. And it actually worked! Sort of. One of the Goblins behind us raised the alarm and, in the brief confusion that followed we bolted. I went racing out to the right with Tom close behind me. The sounds of chaos from the goblins was music to my ears. We were free! For about 5 minutes. It turns out, 20 goblins who know the terrain are more than a match for 2 humans who don¡¯t! The spokes Goblin was wanting for us as we were brought back by a little knot of goblins. He was holding his long nose in his thin, bony fingers. Rather like a human holding his chin in deep thought. ¡°DId You kNow somEtHing wAs goinG to HapPEn, oR arE yOu just vEry faSt tHinkers?¡± this question caught me by surprise. The goblin started to smile ¡°iT WouLd sEem You arE noT Fast tHinkErs. So How dId You kNow wHAt waS gOing to Happen?¡± ¡°Well-¡± Tom began, but I cut him off, [worried he would get us into even more trouble] ¡°He is a creature tamer.¡± I said, ¡°and he had just managed to get one of those lizards before you arrived.¡± Tom took this news in stride better than I could have hoped for. The spokes Goblin hummed to himself, clearly thinking over this new information, and then seeming to come back to the present he said, ¡°It iS noT fAr to tHe caMp, wE muSt Hurry; tHe Old One Will wAnt to spEak to You.¡±


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    The goblin camp sat next to a small water fall, the light from the distant dungeon was shining off the water almost like moon light. The camp itself was made up of small circular tents, some of them seemed to be built on wagons, [there were wheels sticking out the sides] I couldn¡¯t tell what they were made of, perhaps leather and bone? Or maybe wood and cloth of some type? None of them was taller than me. It didn¡¯t look like there were enough of them for all the goblins, I guess if you live underground there isn¡¯t as much need for shelter. We came to a stop in front of a tent, no larger than the others, but slightly more ornate. The spokes Goblin stepped forward and called to it¡¯s occupant. Then, slowly, he emerged from the recesses of the tent into the half light of the cavern, leaning heavily on a stub of a stick. The top of his head was bald and wrinkled, but he had little wispy tuffets of white hair that his ears still poked through. And when he spoke, it was in a voice as wrinkly and old as his skin. ¡°WhaT Are theSeS ThinGs that You hAve brouGhT herE?¡± he gesturing at us, ¡°THey sAy tHey Are sUrface dWellers!¡± The spokes Goblin said ¡°ThAt One¡± he pointed at Tom ¡°Claims to bE aBle to contrOl a lizArd.¡± The old Goblin gave a Humm-Ing sound, then lowered himself onto the rock next to his tent flap, ¡°The Ancient onEs talkEd abouT A ¡®SurfAce¡¯ bUt nO onE Has come doWn froM iT iN a lOnG, LonG timE.¡± He seemed to muse on this for what felt like ¡®a long, long time¡¯ before saying; ¡°We trUly livE in a mOst disturBing timE. fIrSt tHe groUnd trembleS and Azure goEs Out. And noW thesE Strange new ThingS appEar.¡± He shook his head ¡°vEry strangE.¡± ¡°Azure?¡± Tom said, as if he was testing the word. The old Goblin tilted his head, and gazed up at him with alarmingly bright eyes, ¡°yEs, iT is What we calL thaT dungeOn.¡± he pointed back the way we had come ¡°buT theN, 15 Cycles agO, the groUnd shakeS,¡± he flapped his hand to add emphases, ¡°The Ancient onEs Say; ¡®wheN thE grounD Shakes; a corE diES¡¯ Normally iT happenS beloW¡± he pointed down past his feet ¡°We feEl it yeS. We fEel it, buT it doEsn¡¯t rEach us. SomEtimes a fisSUre openS And, for a tImE strangE thingS come Out and Walk abouT, poWerful, tHings, buT tHe great cOres alwAys cloEe Up thE crAcks and we carrY oN. But 15 cycles agO the groUnd shOok and Azure wEnt out. Now thE balance iS brokEn.¡± There was another long pause. And then the old Goblin struggled to his feet ¡°I hAve madE a dEcision¡± he said, leaning on his staff ¡°We will lEt thesE thingS From the ¡®surFace¡¯ staY. In these unCertain timEs, whO knows What Might liE arouNd thE next bEnd. We mAy need All the fighterS we cAn geT, sO I welcomE thesE to oUr Camp.¡±


    Epilogue


    I was sitting watching the waterfall. The light from the other dungeon was getting stronger, the old goblin said that without Azure to stop it, it would continue expanding. But it was expanding slowly, like a huge mountain looming far off in my mind. It was a problem but it seemed so far away at the moment that it hardly registered. What worried me now was a far more basic principle: any relationship founded with lies at its base is doomed to fall apart at some point, and our relationship with the goblins was founded on not much more than deceit. I had asked Tom if he could tame a newly hatched lizard, he had said ¡®yes, however¡¯ as soon as it reached the same level as himself it would ¡®go feral¡¯ and he would lose control over it, as any creature\monster that was doing the fighting would level up about ten times faster than him. This was not going to be a long-term solution. So, I sat, and watched the waterfall, trying to come up with a plan. Trying to chart a course through this strange situation. Maybe inspiration was just around the corner, maybe another unexpected event would present itself. Maybe one day I would see the surface again, maybe Tom would too, then again maybe inspiration isn¡¯t just around the corner and it all ends here, outside a Goblin camp, by a waterfall.

 One hell of a fall, Part 2

    I was in a bad mood. That wasn¡¯t unusual these days, small things seemed to set me off so easily, I mean here I was in the heart of the earth and I was still the inventory! The Old One had decided to move the Goblin camp, I thought this was a little over cautious, but the goblins followed him as if he were an oracle; and so the camp was moved. And now there was no handy waterfall right at our feet, all the water had to be carried in! And that is how I found myself with the job of carting water. There was some logic to it with my inventory I could carry more water than 10 goblins. I hadn¡¯t minded so much at first but the daily grind of it was starting to get to me. I trudged on round the large boulders that formed a sort of passage to the New Camp and then out into the open cavern. It looked very different we had seen when we first arrived. It had been a cold world of shadow and pale light coming from a single dungeon entrance. Now it was a kaleidoscope of vivid colours competing and mingling over the landscape. Each dungeon emitted its own colour and intensity of light, over here pale blue, over there intense red, then a bit of yellow mixing in. It was a beautiful everchanging landscape. But under it a battle was raging, that was what the goblins said; the Old One told us that Azure had been one of the biggest dungeons, a stabilizing influence on the others, but now Azure was gone and it was a free for all as the dungeons struggled with one another to gain dominance. I walked on towards the waterfall wondering if my traps had caught anything, I would check them after I had got the water. The traps were just holes in the ground with my imitation spell cast to hide them. I could maintain the spell just fine but a link was always there in the back of my mind. If I lost the link, the spell would fail. I arrived at the waterfall, this was the most dangerous part of getting water; because two dungeons were in the process of claiming this territory. I wasn¡¯t worried I could just run away if I needed to; dungeons are very territorial, so as soon as you are out of their space, they give up attacking you. But if they find you in their territory then it is ¡®no prisoners taken!¡¯ So, I scanned the area carefully before heading for the water¡¯s edge. I started pulling the water bags out of my inventory and dunking them in the water, better to be quick than caught. [there was no wood down in the cavern, so all the water bags were made from leather or other animal parts that you don¡¯t want to think about too much] I had filled about 2/3rds of them before I was interrupted by the crab! Its¡¯ carapace was about the size of my palm and it was pale blue in colour. [Like the dungeon it came from] It came at me from the pool with raised pincers, clearly planning to attack. I kicked it back into the water as soon as it made land, it skipped once, like a stone on the water¡¯s surface, and then sank back out of sight. I plunged another container into the water, now in a real hurry to be done. When I tried to pull the container out, and it didn¡¯t budge, what was going on? I pulled harder and then saw the claw coming up out of the water, holding the other end of the container, I let go of the container and stepped back. That was the biggest crab claw I had ever seen! The crab attached to it was now making its¡¯ way out of the water, and, at a glance I could see that I was out matched! I cast fear, [which was now at level 2] turned tail, and bolted. ¡®Put to flight by some crabs! How embarrassing!¡¯ I thought as I ran. But what was I supposed to do? I had no offensives spells, and no weapon. Normally I would just drop rocks on anything in my traps until the experience notification told me it was dead. I ran on, ¡®I must be out of the crab territory by now,¡¯ there was a stony mound to my left, I decided to hide behind it and just make sure nothing was following me! I came round the mound at a jog, and tripped over a goblin. I saved myself from a broken nose by a narrow margin, but I did take the skin off my knee. ¡°Where did you come from?¡± Tom asked from behind me, his voice cheerful as ever, ¡°Boo Ra, are you alright?¡± I turned to see him bent over the goblin, was the goblin ¡®alright¡¯ I scowled and coldly said ¡°I was getting water¡± I was finding Toms cheerful mood to be clashing with my own, ¡°more to the point what are <u>you</u> doing here?¡± Tom seemed to remember that they were, actually doing something, rather than just admiring the scenery, ¡°Oh! We nearly lost him! Boo Ra are you alright to walk, we will have to hurry. Come on then, before he disappears!¡± still feeling annoyed, but also curious, I trailed after them. I saw what was going on a moment later while I was hiding behind another rock pile with the others. We were following a goblin, normally goblins are very energetic, rather mischievous creatures. But this one was looking miserable, he moved like a sleepwalker; slowly and not aware of the world around him at all! ¡°What happened to him?¡± I asked Tom in a low voice, ¡°not sure¡± Tom answered, ¡°we went to see if Pearl and Sandy had met yet, and to see if we could pick off any stragglers. We got into a four-way fight, it was a bit chaotic, and the next thing I know Boo Ra comes running up to me and saying, ¡®one of the goblins is wandering off!¡¯ So, we chased after it.¡± I turned to Boo Ra ¡°what happened?¡± The small goblin fidgeted, shifting his wait from one foot to the other; ¡°he was fighting, fighting well, then he suddenly went¡­ strange.¡± ¡°What was he fighting?¡± I pressed and Boo Ra fidgeted more, ¡°a small prickly, with red spots¡± I considered this, a small prickly was a hedgehog type creature and was fairly harmless. I had caught a few in my traps, but had never seen one with red spots, maybe it was a new variant?


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    [ The 1<sup>st</sup> Level ]


    We followed the little goblin with the red spots, it was easy as he did not seem to be aware of us at all. Soon we started to meet other creatures, all traveling in the same direction, there were some more hedgehog type creatures some pale blue crabs, and a newly hatched lizard. None of them tried to attack each other and they all seemed to have the same destination in mind. They were all heading towards a crack in the cavern wall and out of the crack streamed bright red light. The light fell on a throng of creatures as they filed through it. We observed them from a safe distance, stretched out on the ground, [this part of the cavern was still fairly dark,] ¡°well, it looks like this is as far as we go¡± I said ¡°we can¡¯t just leave!¡± Tom protested, ¡°not after following him all this way. We have to see what is going on inside!¡± I looked at Tom, there were times when, I found his delusions about living in one of the old legends very annoying! ¡°Look!¡± I said trying to sound calm and reasonable, ¡°that is a dungeon, we can¡¯t just walk in there say; ¡®just browsing,¡¯ and walk out again! That is how you get torn to shreds!¡± ¡°But we can¡¯t just leave him there! We-¡± ¡°-Look!¡± Boo Ra interrupted us, jumping up and down by my elbow and pointing, ¡°up there!¡± Tom and I looked. At first, I couldn¡¯t see what had gotten Boo Ra so excited, then I saw it. High up, above the entrance and a little to the right, more of the bright red light was shining through the rough wall. ¡°Of coarse!¡± Tom said, clearly as pumped as Boo Ra, ¡°one of the goblins told me that that the rocks will go very porous here, if they aren¡¯t part of a dungeon! If we climb up there, we might be able to see what is going on!¡± I objected to this, but my objections fell on deaf ears. We headed for the wall and started climbing. ¡°And now what?¡± I asked a few minutes later. We were clinging to the wall of the cavern just below the light. None of us were in a position to move for fear of coming off the wall and plummeting. The stupidity of this idea was really coming home to me, I just hoped Tom would see sense! But Tom just smiled. His face had gone from concentrating, hard, to serene! ¡°Don¡¯t worry. Help is on the way!¡± Tom said, I supressed my immediate impulse to kick him off the wall, and waited. There was the sound of scrabbling sound followed by an ecstatic; ¡°Danny!¡± from Tom. And a second later Danny, Toms new pet lizard, climbed past me, heading up the wall. It took me a moment to realise what Tom was thinking, and I didn¡¯t like it much. Danny like all his kind had a club tail, a tail that was now raised; ready to make a new hand hold for me, it came down. Hard. Dust and little rock fragments filled the air and fell past me. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall in front of me. Reflected on the disaster that was my life. Danny made a few more holes, and then, just as I started to climb again, a large chunk of the wall fell through in front of me and I found myself staring into the dungeon. The sight was strange; there were creatures from every dungeon I had seen, and several creatures I didn¡¯t recognise at all. There were blue crabs, like the ones I had run away from, there were lizards like Danny, there were snow elementals, large snowy creatures that often came in strange shapes, there were the hedgehog creatures, and lot of other strange creatures too. They mingled with each other, standing around in small groups, or by themselves. And the entire scene was bathed in a bright red light [almost pink in some cases] the light came from veins in the walls, the veins were as thin as spider webs and would have been invisible if they hadn¡¯t been glowing. In the centre of this room, surrounded by the monsters that should have been attacking each other, stood a raised platform, [ a dais if you like] on this platform sat a crystal crown. It looked strangely out of place. I pointed at it, and Boo Ra excitedly said ¡°it must be the key*.¡± Tom was not interested in the key; he was busy scanning the horde for the stray goblin. Tom started to lean in through the hole so he could see the room better. I looked around too. I couldn¡¯t help but think that this would be an awesome place to cast a few illusion spells from. I could just picture the effect of a fury spell on that mass of monsters, and we would be safe and sound up here on the wall. It was at that moment when the wall started to crumble. It started slowly; just a little trickle of dust, a pebble being dislodged, and then¡­ the piece of wall with us on it became detached, and we found ourselves sliding down the wall into the mass of monsters. We reached the bottom with a roar of noise, sand, dust, and stones settled around us. For a long moment all the monsters just looked at us, and we looked at all of them, and nothing moved. And then everything moved! The next few moments were chaotic blur, there was no time for careful plans or clear thought, Boo Ra squeaked something about ¡®getting to the key.¡¯ We were running, without really knowing where we were going, any second expecting to find an arm missing. I honestly don¡¯t know how we got to the centre of the room in one piece. But we did, and I found myself holding the ornate crystal crown. And nothing was happening, all the creatures were rushing closer, all coloured with the red light, Boo Ra was hoping around flapping his hands, squeaking in a high voice ¡°pour manna in it! Pour manna in it!¡± I fumbled the crown and then, in a panic, flared manna. There was a turning sensation at the bottom of my stomach and my sight went strange, the world seemed to bend and then, reshape itself, and there we were; standing all alone in a desert.


    *( Note: the key in this instance is a port key to the 2<sup>nd</sup> level)

 In the desert!

    [ The 2nd Level ]


    It took me a second to adjust to the sudden change of environment. Tom sank to his knees next to me, and embraced Danny and Scar, as if they had been dogs. Boo Ra who had been dancing around, waving his hands in the air, stopped waving his hands in the air, and looked embarrassed. He turned away from us, and took a moment to regain his composure, or at least his fa?ade of composure. I just felt stunned, and stood still. Looking out into the desert, still, absentmindedly holding the crystal crown out in front of me. The desert stretched out to the horizon all around us; vast, and coloured a reddish/orange by a sinking sun. At first, I could only stand and stare at our new surroundings. In fact, it was more like squint; I had gotten used to the gloom of the cavern, and was finding the desert uncomfortably bright. I turned my attention to Boo Ra, [when it came to the surface, the goblins had very small, very closed, minds, but when it came to dungeons, their knowledge was second to none.] ¡°Well, Boo Ra, any idea what is going on?¡± I waved a hand at our surrounding. Boo Ra did a bit of umming and ahhing and then, without sounding very confident said, ¡°This must be an interdimensional space, the second level, a bit like your inventory, only, bigger, much bigger. I heard dungeons could do this, but I never thought I would see it!¡± I ignored the remark about the size of my inventory and looked out to the horizon, and then down to the sand at my feet. I bent down and picked some of the sand up and let it trickle back through my fingers. How did all this work? I shrugged; it wasn¡¯t important. ¡°Well, do you have any idea how we get out of here? Back to the cave?¡± I asked; Boo Ra just shifted about uncomfortably, ¡°all dungeons are different, some have an exit key, some don¡¯t. In some, if you use the original key the right way¡± he pointed at the crown in my hand, ¡°you can go back, or forward, between levels, others have a different key for each level¡± the brightness of the desert was starting to give me a headache, ¡°how do we know which sort of dungeon this is?¡± Boo Ra fidgeted a bit, and then admitted that he didn¡¯t know! I tried flaring manna into the crown again, but it just lay there in my hand and did nothing! So, we set out walking, what else could we do? A gentle breeze blew sand over our tracks, and it felt like we hadn¡¯t moved at all, the ¡®sun¡¯ didn¡¯t sink any lower in the sky, but my subconscious instinct said ¡®night is about to fall¡¯ and I seemed poised for it, for some change. my headache got worse. The brightness, or rather the intensity of the light was getting to me. We walked on, and nothing seemed to change, time might be standing still for all the progress we seemed to make. The only sound was our plodding steps, and now and then the whisper of the wind over the dunes. And then, as if out of nowhere, a snake, attacked! It was almost a relief to have something happen! The snake was small, and brown, rather nondescript, but it was the first monster we had come across on this level. And it broke the feeling of being outside of time. It came from our right, and went it went straight for Boo Ra. It almost got him too. But goblins have an amazing turn of speed when they need it, and Boo Ra leapt back out of the way in time, [he remined me of an illustration in the adventures hand book of a spider struck by a lightning spell, arms and legs thrown out at strange angles] it was not a dignified escape but it did give Scar enough time to rush in. There was a blur of fur and scales, and then it was over. Scar stood panting, but triumphant as the body of the snake started to glow, and then to fade away, reabsorbed into the dungeon. We looked at one another, and for a while no one spoke, then Tom, with the ghost of a smile said, ¡°that was a close-run thing!¡± Boo Ra just nodded, ¡°I think we should let Danny go first¡± Tom continued, ¡°he is immune to poison you know.¡± I had not known, but I didn¡¯t start an argument over it. We started walking again, and it was not long before we ran into another snake, and then another after that! The snakes seemed to get bigger the farther we walked. I was almost at the point of suggesting we back track when I saw something in the distance. It looked like matchsticks poking out of the sand on the horizon! We walked towards it, and the snakes kept coming, faster, and larger. At one point Danny had about 5 of them hanging off him dragging along in the sand, but he did seem completely immune to their venom, and ploughed on as steady as ever. The matchsticks slowly grew larger, and I could start to make out details. They looked like statues. Odd, mismatched statues but still statues! It looked as if someone had made a giant statue of a bird, and then a statue of a man, but the pieces had somehow gotten mixed up, because the human statue had the birds head and claws, and the bird statue had the man¡¯s head! [the bird statue had its¡¯ base buried in the sand so I couldn¡¯t see if it had human hands] But between the two statues, and overshadowing them; was a huge pole that had a snake skull mounted on it. It was enormous, our entire party could have fitted in the skulls mouth, if it had been living. I looked at the desert around us, wondering if another of these giants was going to appear. But the statues [and skull] were the only feature on a vast sea of sand. I looked at Tom, he was just telling Danny, ¡®What a good boy¡¯ he was, and seemed as relaxed as ever. Then I looked at Boo Ra; who was picking his nose, not realising I was watching him. It looked like I was the only one who did not like the look of this. I told myself to ¡®stop being a scaredy cat¡¯ and pressed on.


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    The ¡®sunset¡¯ bathed the statues in red light and made the snake skull look [almost] like it had blood on it. They towered over us as we walked among them. In the sand around them were pieces of other statues, the stray arm, or part of a foot, or head, lay scattered, half covered by the sand. In the centre of the statues, right below the snake skull stood an altar on a raised platform. We walked through the statues towards the altar. No one spoke, a stillness seemed to have settled around us. I looked up at the statues, which stood like giant priests presiding over some lost ceremony. We reached the platform, and stood; looking at an empty altar. It was as we were standing there, not knowing what to do, that the disaster struck!

 Getting out of a sandy situation

    It had been a mad dash to get out of the way, I was sitting on top of the statue with a human body and a bird¡¯s head and a serpent crown. Tom had somehow made it up onto the jaw of the snake skull, and I could just see Boo Ra, peering out of one nostril of bird statue with a human head. ¡°Now what?¡± I shouted, looking down to where Danny still stood tail raised to attack. ¡°Don¡¯t know¡± Tom called back, ¡°I am afraid he has gone feral¡± I sometimes wondered why Tom had to state the bloody obvious! ¡°Can you get him under control again?¡± I asked ¡°I¡¯m afraid not¡± ¡°well, what are we going to do? Wait until he climbs up after one of us?¡± Tom stretched out a bit on the jaw bone, with Scar curled round his neck like a scarf, ¡°he probably won¡¯t¡± ¡°¡¯probably?¡¯¡± I asked ¡°normally they get very aggressive right when they break free from the spell, then they lose interest. He should just wonder off, in a little while.¡± There seemed like a lot of uncertainty in all of that to me. ¡°What about Scar?¡± I asked ¡°What about Scar?¡± Tom said, rather defensively I thought, ¡°how far is he from going feral?¡± the idea of an exited ferret let loose was not appealing to me. Tom shifted about uncomfortably, before, flatly saying, ¡°not close at all!¡±  I dropped the subject, but I made a mental note to keep an eye on Scar.


    Some time had passed, but nothing had changed. I glared at Tom who was stretched out, with a ferret around his neck, he looked like he could stay there for all eternity if needed. I, on the other hand, was sitting on a stone crown, and it was very uncomfortable. I was bored too. I started to shift around; trying to arrange myself differently. I nearly lost my balance and was only saved by grabbing on with my fingertips. And it was in this position, while I was regaining my seat that I saw the words. The words that were imprinted round the base of the crown!                                                                                                                                                                                                                        ¡®           I was once king of the sky, once the great fire up high,                                                                            ¡®                               But I was thrown down, and I lost my crown,                                                                                                              ¡®                                       HE extinguished my fire, didn¡¯t let it grow higher, now give me my glory or die.¡¯


    As I had nothing better to do, I passed this discovery on to the others. ¡°Maybe it is a riddle that we have to solve in order to get to the next level¡± this seemed a little farfetched, but hey, I didn¡¯t have any better ideas, so, I read it through again. ¡°¡¯It says to give him his glory¡¯¡± I said, ¡°but what is his glory and how do we give it?¡± Tom was gazing off into the distance, apparently lost in thought, eventually he said, ¡°you still have that crystal crown, don¡¯t you?¡± ¡°yes¡± I said, ¡°But I have tried that, it isn¡¯t working here!¡± Tom ignored this and called ¡°hey, Boo Ra,¡± Boo Ra popped his head out of one giant nostril and looked from Tom to me, ¡°should the key have stayed after we got here? Or should it have vanished or broken, or something?¡± Boo Ra thought about this before shrugging, ¡°normally, they disappear after use, but every dungeon is different.¡± Tom smiled ¡°well, we have got a crown. The other thing he lost was fire... Hey, Boo Ra¡± Boo Ra, who had started to retreat back into the nostril stopped, and looked back at Tom with beady eyes, ¡°do you have some spare earwax we could borrow?¡± ¡°No!¡± Boo Ra said, and his head disappeared into the nostril. Tom sighed, ¡°oh well, we will just have to find something else to burn.¡± After going through both our inventories we came up with a piece of old bread [as hard and dry as a stale biscuit] I had my doubts as to whether this would work or not.


    And I was definitely not going to risk my life, or my knee caps, trying to get past Danny to the altar, when there was no guaranty that I could make the key work. But I couldn¡¯t wait indefinitely; my stone seat was getting more uncomfortable by the moment. Not for the first time in my life, I wished that I was an elemental mage; then I could have sent a fire ball down and gotten rid of the problem! But I was only an illusionist, what could I do? And then I saw something; a piece of statue, larger then most, sticking out of the sand, and, like someone striking a match, an idea appeared.  I started up my spell, and watched as my illusion took shape. The statue I had selected seemed to shrink, and melt, then reform itself into an exact copy of Danny. Of cause, the statue had not actually changed at all, it just looked like a lizard now. I thought it had come out very well. Danny must have thought so too, because when he saw it, his legs went stiff and he raised his tail menacingly. He started strutting about and then thumping his tail into the ground. I made some adjustments to the illusion; and soon it was matching him step for step. It took a while to work Danny up enough to attack, but when he did at last attack; the results were better than I could have hoped for. He brought his tail down with all the force he had, on what he though was his opponents¡¯ head, but was in fact the base of the statue. He must have packed quite a punch, because he brought the entire statue came down on top of him. I knew that he wasn¡¯t dead because I didn¡¯t get any exp notification, but at least he was trapped. Tom and I climbed down and made a dash for the altar; I shoved the crystal crown down, and Tom pulled out the piece of old bread. Then Tom held out his pet fire mouse [Red] and we stood waiting, Reds¡¯ noise twitched as he sniffed the air, his whiskers accentuating the movement, and then came a sneeze, it seemed to start in Reds¡¯ tail, and work its way down his spine until it came out his noise with a little explosion of fire. It would have been cute, if I hadn¡¯t been worrying that Danny would break free at any second! With his work done, Red turned in Toms¡¯ palm and walked up his sleeve. Just as his tail disappeared, I felt the world turning at the bottom of my stomach and the world seemed to fold.


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    [ The 3<sup>rd</sup> Level ]


    We were standing on the edge of a sea. A sea that stretched away in front of us, as still as glace, and glowing red. Just a shade darker than blood. Far out, near the horizon, a black silhouette of an island sat. A black rock in a red sea. ¡°That is where we have to go.¡± I said pointing, ¡°Are you sure?¡± Tom asked, looking around at the beach, ¡°look around!¡± I said, gesturing ¡°it is the only distinct feature here! That has to be where the next key is.¡± I ¡°well¡­ how do we get there?¡± Tom asked. I frowned at the island, at the red sea, and also at the sunset sky, ¡°I do not know!¡± I admitted sourly. ¡°Couldn¡¯t we swim?¡± Boo Ra asked. I sat down on the sand and rested my head on my knees, it had been too long since I had slept. Trying hard to keep my growing irritation under control I said, ¡°do you really think there is nothing in that water? I am almost certain there is, and I really don¡¯t want to face it in the water, in its own territory!¡± ¡°Well, what do we do then?¡± Tom asked, I let the silence drag a little before I said ¡°we wait¡­ and think.¡± I sat and tried to think, but nothing was coming to me. Tom pulled a pack of cards from his inventory and started a game with Boo Ra. I sat the first round out, and then, getting nowhere with my thinking I joined them. Boo Ra was bad at cards, he put up a front, but you could always see, that he was putting up a front. Tom had potential as a player, but he was too kind and never pushed his advantage enough:


    ¡°You should have played the king.¡± I said to Tom as I put my cards down. Tom shrugged ¡°I didn¡¯t want to put you in that position¡± ¡°isn¡¯t the whole point of the game to put me in that position?¡± I asked under my breath, I turned to Boo Ra ¡°your ears twitched when I threw away that queen, you gave yourself away,¡± ¡°let¡¯s have another game!¡± Tom said and started dealing. I looked down at the hand I had gotten, I had nothing, it would have been hard to make a hand worse than this one. Oh well, Tom discarded a card. I asked for two, then discarded two, I looked over at Boo Ra; he was putting such an obvious effort into keeping his ears still, that it was plain as day that he was interested in one of the two cards. I mentally rolled my eyes, and looked back at my hand, it was rubbish, there was no way I could win this. Unless¡­ no, that would be cheating. But Tom and Boo Ra were playing so badly; they really didn¡¯t deserve to win, and besides; I am an illusionist, it is about the only thing this class is good for!


    Boo Ra delt the next round. I planned to let Tom win that round, he had a clear advantage, and then he discarded the tortoise card. I looked up, frustrated; couldn¡¯t he just play the game? I knew he was kind, but this was just stupid, like he wasn¡¯t even trying. And then I saw that he wasn¡¯t trying, he was looking out over the water, a thousand-mile stare, then in a small, lost, voice he said ¡°I¡¯m going to miss Danny¡­ I always thought, when the time came¡­ I was going to take him out to one of the caves and let him go¡­ then at least I¡¯d know he was out there, somewhere¡­ but now, he¡¯ll be stuck in a dungeon forever!¡± he took an unsteady breath and blinked. We didn¡¯t finish that game.

 An encounter with tentacles

    I woke up, to find that nothing had changed; no monsters had attacked, the sea was as still as ever, and no one had come up with a brilliant idea to get us to the island. I dug some provisions out of my inventory and handed them around. There was not enough in my inventory to carry this on indefinitely, but I didn¡¯t tell the others that, it would just be one more thing to worry about and distract from the problem at hand. Not that they seemed very focused on the problem! Tom seemed like his old self, and was telling Boo Ra about Cornelis The Bloody, [one of the old heroes] ¡°¡­and after that, he had to supress the alliance of orcs and men in the wild country! He singlehandedly killed over 600 of them before they retreated! But their water mages nearly wiped him out when they sent a flood down the valley!¡± ¡°How did he escape?¡± Boo Ra asked, wide eyed. ¡°Cornelis didn¡¯t ¡®escape¡¯¡± Tom said clearly in awe of his hero ¡°He rose above the waves, with great endurance and fortitude he emerged from the torrent victorious!¡± I looked at Tom, then at Boo Ra¡¯s confused face.  I stepped in with a few more details, ¡°He survived the flood by ripping the bladers out of his fallen enemies and inflating them. That is how the legend goes anyway.¡± ¡°How did he have time to inflate the bladers?¡± Boo Ra asked, ¡°well he would have had a lot of skill points in agility¡± Tom said ¡°he was a swordsman after all!¡± I left them to talk and scowled out at the sea; if only we had some spare bladers of fallen enemies lying around, maybe we could make a raft or something. But the whole idea was stupid, even if an enemy did show up, the dungeon would just reabsorb it before we could use a blader or anything else from its¡¯ fallen corpse. I shook my head and turned my attention to my inventory, I had a few bits of dried meat, some very stale bread, and a few good handfuls of a soft fungus that the goblins grew and made up a large part of their diet. Most of it was taken up with goblin water bags, other than that, I had some odds and ends; short pieces of rope, half a flint, that sort of thing¡­  Goblin Water Bags! I jumped to my feet smiling, water bags were better than bladers, less messy. Now, the only question was, ¡®did I have enough of them?¡¯


    It floated! Sure, it looked like scrap heap had been thrown into the water; Tom had given up his belt to help lash it together, a jacket and shirt made up some more of the tying materials. Here and there little bits of string were sticking out at interesting angles; but it floated. for just a second we stood admiring our handy work, and then came the trouble of getting on it. Tom was the first to try, he stepped out with great confidence, then needed to lie down very fast, [ a deck, held together with cloths and string, isn¡¯t very stable] I, carefully, crawled after him, and last came Boo Ra. It was a good thing that this ¡®sea¡¯ was as still as it was; with all of us on board, not only were we in danger of upsetting the balance, but we were also dangerously low in the water. But in spite of this we were feeling rather optimistic as we pushed off from the shore. Boo Ra was paddling with Toms rapier, [ we had stuck the end into a porous rock, that Tom had in his inventory, to make a sort of paddle] as Boo Ra was the lightest, he seemed the least likely to capsize us.


    Progress was slow, the air was still and quiet. The paddle went into the water, and came out dripping red. As we moved, we sent ripples across the water, that died away into nothing. The water looked like wine, and I couldn¡¯t see into it. Not knowing what might be around us made me tense. Then in the still air, I heard something, something far away; it was music, beautiful music! I only caught a few, ethereal notes, and then it dropped away, and I was left straining my ears in the still air. ¡°Did you hear that?¡± I asked, keeping my voice down, in a sort of reverent awe, ¡°Sure. Any idea where it is coming from?¡± Tom asked, looking around, I shook my head, and then wiped some water off my face, I looked up to see Boo Ra was holding the paddle up, pointing ahead of us, towards the dark island, ¡°it comes from there.¡± He said, I looked at the island, then back at Boo Ra, ¡°it must be coming from further away than that!¡± I said, Boo Ra just shook his head, and then picked his ear, [rather like someone might pick their noise] I heard it again, it was singing! I couldn¡¯t make out any words, maybe they were in another language, or maybe there were no words just a sound, so clear, so complete somehow¡­ as the music dropped away again, I said impatiently ¡°well, what are we waiting for? The island is our destination, if that is where it is coming from, let¡¯s go!¡± Boo Ra raised the paddle again and we were off.


    The island was closer than it had looked from the shore and was made from a rough black stone. There where little out cropping and ledges round the island, and it was on these that I saw the singers: they were so dark and still that at first, I thought they were just part of the rock, but then I saw them and I couldn¡¯t make them blend into the rock again. They were mermaids¡­ but not like I had ever heard them described, sure they had a fish¡¯s tail, and a human-ish upper body. But they were short, fat, creatures, they reminded me of a seal I had once seen as a child. And to top off these grotesque beings was hair that seemed to be made of tentacles.


    Boo Ra paddled us closer to the island, [in a place where there were no mermaids] every now and then I would catch a bit of the mermaids¡¯ song, it always sounded like it was coming from a long way off, and I was always left wanting to get closer, to hear more, but I resisted. When disasters happen, they happen fast. We were at the island, it rose like a wall in front of us, but the rock was so ruff that it was easy to climb, Tom had already disembarked, and was clambering up the wall with ease. I had one foot on the raft and the rest of me was on the wall. The water all around us was smooth and still and then, it was boiling with tentacles. These weren¡¯t the ¡®hair¡¯ like tentacles from the mermaids, these where huge, bigger than my leg tentacles, I scrambled up the wall, heart racing.


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    I was holding on to the rock and looking back, Tom was to my left, with Scar perched on his shoulder, hanging his neck out as if he was afraid he would miss something. Back over my shoulder I could see Boo Ra clinging to the remains of our raft. He had lost the rapier/paddle and was splashing with his hands, like a cripple, trying to pull himself along. He was almost at the island when, the water again boiled with tentacles, and he was gone! I stared at the water, once again still. A bubble floated up, bringing with it a piece of goblin, a piece that belonged inside. I climbed up the rock, it wasn¡¯t like I could do anything to get him back! I stopped at the top, feeling like I might vomit. Tom hadn¡¯t seen what happened to Boo Ra, he was looking the other way, so it took a bit of persuading before he got it. But when he got it, it hit him hard! He sank down onto the rock like I had just punched him in the gut, staring at nothing. I thought he was being a little over dramatic, but I left him to it and started to look around. The island dipped down into a crater, when I got down inside it, it was almost like having walls around me. In this ¡®room¡¯ there was a statue, but it wasn¡¯t like the ones in the desert. This one was black, and could almost have grown out of the rock of the island. It was meant to be a mermaid. Up close the hair looked more like snakes, but the statue was rather crude. The tail seemed to fuse with the rock and was even less distinct than the rest of her. She seemed to be looking at her hands, which were held out in front of her, like she was about to take something. In front of the statue, in the centre of the room, was a fountain, with more of the red, glowing, water in it. I walked towards the fountain, fixated on its glowing water, my toe court on the uneven floor and I stumbled, and fell. I used my hands to break my fall, as I got up, I noticed that the uneven floor wasn¡¯t actually uneven, but rather it was carved! I could just make out letters cut into the floor, but as it turns out, black holes on a black floor do not make for easy reading. So, I left the letters and went on to look at the fountain. In the fountain lay an ovel mirror. It was silvery white and seemed so out of place in that red and black world! I was not sure if it was glass, or crystal. It¡¯s curved shape, put me in mind of a large dish, or small shield. I looked up from the fountain and surveyed the rest of the ¡®room;¡¯ there was nothing else there, just rough black walls under a dark red sky. My eyes travelled round the edge of the crater, finally finding Tom, still huddled where I had left him. It didn¡¯t look like I was going to get any help from there! I took a deep breath and tried to concentrate; There had to be a way past this point, like those statues in the desert, there was a statue here too, and there were words carved in the floor. I needed to find a way to read those words. I looked back at the fountain as I thought, and the image of Boo Ra from a few minutes earlier rose in my mind before I could stop it. The moment started playing in my mind, the tentacle appearing, so close that I could touch it, Boo Ra¡¯s face, and then, a still, glowing sea. ¡®Focus on the problem¡¯ I told myself, annoyed that I had let the memory replay in my mind!


    The water filled the second column of letters on the stone floor. Word by word it was taking shape. I was using a ruined water bottle that I had salvaged to take water from the fountain to the letters. I had first tried to flare manna at the letters, but the black stone seemed to suck it in without letting it illuminate anything; so, I was trudging between the fountain and the words, filling out a few words and then going back to the fountain to get more water. It was tedious but effective: red letters glowing in the dark floor, it was quite cool. At last, I was finished, here is what I read;


    ¡®I once served the ruler, reflecting his light¡¯


    ¡®But now I reign here, by my own might¡¯


    ¡®I once desired his beauty, spread across the sky¡¯


    ¡®Now show me my beauty, or you will die.¡¯


    Why was it written in this needlessly complicated way!? Why couldn¡¯t it have been just strait forward instructions? I tried to calm myself down and think. I had a mirror, by dint of it being the only thing here it must be important¡­ ¡®show me my beauty¡¯ ¡­ the only other thing here was the statue; so¡­ show the statue¡­ Itself? I pulled the mirror from the fountain and walked to the waiting statue. I turned the mirror, and placed it in the statues waiting hands. Nothing happened. I frowned, wondering what to do next, and then, a scream, I assume it came from the statue, but it was so high pitched and sudden, that I wasn¡¯t really sure. It swelled, getting louder and louder, more grating, and ragged. I covered my ears, but it did not help! It was like it was drilling into my head, reverberating through my entire body. Just when I thought my head would explode from the noise, the mirror did explode, and shards of it filled the air. They seemed to be vibrating with the sound, filling the world with echoes of it. And right then I felt the world beginning to twist, and a feeling in the bottom of my stomach, the feeling of the next level!


    End of part 2

 One hell of a fall, part 3

    Level 4; poisonous poppies.


    I was sitting at a garden table with the pieces of crystal mirror spread out in front of me, there were a few pieces that I had managed to fit together, and a lot of pieces that I hadn¡¯t, I picked up one of these and tried to fit it into the mirror. This was the 4<sup>th</sup> level; a garden table surrounded by red poppies; that stretched away in all directions. The sky over head was black, no stars, no sun. the only light came from the petals of the poppies; a vivid red light. And where the poppies stopped there was just blackness, I wasn¡¯t sure if the ground fell away, or if there where creatures out there in the darkness, and I didn¡¯t want to find out. The table had the instructions, engraved on its top;


    ¡®Find the pieces that were lost¡¯


    ¡®Repair what was shattered and broken¡¯


    ¡®Complete your task before the frost¡¯


    ¡®Or your end will be spoken¡¯


    And so, after some deliberation I had started to collect the pieces of mirror to try and reassemble it. It was frustrating, like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle without any picture on it, and worse, without all the pieces. I added the shard I was holding to the growing pile; it didn¡¯t fit. My stomach rumbled. I still had some stale bread in my inventory but I was holding on to that, reluctant to eat the last meal that was from outside the dungeon. I looked around at the garden of poppies, I had come to hate this red light, but more than the light, I hated the smell. These flowers gave off a stench that I cannot describe, but under it, under the awful odour, was a smell that made your mouth water. It hadn¡¯t taken us very long to realise you could eat the flowers¡­ but there were¡­ side effects. I let out a sigh, and looked at Tom, where the side effects where on full display, he was lying on the ground with half closed eyes in the grip of the flowers spell. Next to him lay Scar doing a dead ferret impersonation with all four legs in the air. The flowers produced a sort of waking dream; you saw things, colours that weren¡¯t really there, and sometimes people. They gave an escape from the world around you. Tom, who was still coming to terms with Boo Ra¡¯s sudden departure, had taken to them fast and hard. I had not, maybe it was because I was an illusionist, or maybe there was another reason; but for whatever reason I could not shake the feeling that the colours weren¡¯t real, that they were just some sort of hallucination, and what I wanted was real colours, I did not understand the mechanics of how they worked either, so I tried to avoid it as much as possible. The problem was that besides letting you escape from the moment, they also provided some sort of nourishment, and with our dwindling supplies, there wasn¡¯t much of an alternative. I stood up from the table, stretched and picked a flower, I stood looking at its glowing petals, and then, feeling resigned ate it. For a moment nothing happened, and then the garden exploded with colour!


    The dream, for want of a better word, was never the same twice over. Sometimes you could just see colours playing across your vision. Sometimes you saw the garden, but not how the garden actually was. And sometimes you saw people; today I saw my father, he was a tall man with a short grey beard and when he looked at me his eyes, which might be called soulful, took on the look of disappointment. ¡°I always told you that nothing good comes from adventuring. You should have given it up when your class came through; but no, you always had to talk about ¡®rising above what you were given¡¯ and ¡®seeing things in a different way!¡¯ and look at where it has got you!¡± he gestured at the field of red flowers stretching away around us, ¡°why don¡¯t you stop this nonsense and  come back home, your brothers are all happily settled and-¡± ¡°I am never going back to that crummy village!¡± I said, cutting my father off ¡°I hate it! Everyone doing the same thing! No one thinking an original thought, what sort of life is that!¡± My father looked at me, and then turned his gaze to Toms¡¯ sleeping figure, ¡°and what sort of life is this?¡± I looked at Tom, who, at that moment looked like thought of any kind, was a long way off. I looked back at my father, ¡°you are right.¡± I said [it hurt to admit it] ¡°you are right, this,¡± I gestured around me ¡°this might well be hell! But at least I don¡¯t have to listen to you tell me what to do!¡± we locked eyes and a stillness settled around us, at last my father shrugged ¡°well, if that is how you feel¡­¡± he turned and slowly, started to walk away through the red field of poppies. I watched his retreating back; he looked smaller than he should, older somehow, I felt a pang of guilt, and that made me even angrier, and stood up and screamed at the now distant figure ¡°this may be hell, but at least I got here on my own! Not like my brothers!¡± I rolled over and rubbed my face, the conversation with my father had left me feeling, like most conversations with my father; small and a bit of a failure. I pulled up my stats menu to try and feel better about myself. I was level 9 after all, which was better than any non-adventurer could hope for. My stats read as follows;


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    Health 70                                       Manna 120                                              Stamina 30


    Strength 5                                        Agility 8                                                   Vitality 4


    Spells;                                         Imitate level 2                                              Distort level 1


    Fear level 2                                                   Fury level 2


    [I was very pleased with ¡®Fury¡¯ it was the only spell in my roster that actually had some offensive ability, and unlike ¡®Fear¡¯ Fury could work on creatures of any level. ¡®Fear level 2¡¯ would fail on any creature over level 10, on the other hand ¡®Fury level 2¡¯ would not fail because of a creature¡¯s level; it could fail for other reasons, or just be very weak. Fear and Fury were both emotional illusions- they made the target mistake some orderly emotion for the cast one- this made them unpredictable. But I still thought they were better than Imitate and Distort which were sensory illusions.]


    Feeling a little better about myself I got up and walked, unsteadily to the table. How long would it take to complete the mirror? I had no idea. But when you came down to it the very concept of time down here was vague at best. My perception of time was hopelessly inaccurate, I just kept working until I couldn¡¯t take it anymore; until I couldn¡¯t stand looking at one more shard! I stood up; I didn¡¯t want to risk seeing my father again. So, instead of eating another flower I went for a walk round the garden. All the while keeping an eye out for the stray glint that betrayed the presence of mirror shards. I walked, at one point I found a piece of mirror no bigger than my little finger nail, I picked it up and then walked on. I walked until I was fed up with it, then, at last I gave in and picked another flower, and ate it!

 In the Poppie Garden

    As the ¡®dream¡¯ started I felt the tension leave me; I knew this dream it was safe. A girl walked down the path that went out from the garden table and meandered into the field of poppies. She was short, with blond hair and a plump round face. She was not very pretty, but I couldn¡¯t take my eyes off her, she was the only thing of colour in this black and red world. I followed her, I don¡¯t know if I walked or floated, but I followed her. She picked poppies as she walked and made them into a bunch, then she spun around making her skirt flare out around her ankles, it reminded me of a girl from the village, she had just gotten married and was always smiling, but never happier than when she was on her way home. Carefree, with the whole world at her feet. I had tried to talk to this apparition, [this ghost] before, but if she could hear or see me, she gave no sign; almost like she was an echo of the past, that I could observe but not effect. We reached the end of the path and turned back. I didn¡¯t have to look, I had seen it all before, it was almost imperceptible but already her dress was starting to fade, and her walk was getting slower, I wished I knew what these ¡®dreams¡¯ were! I would feel more comfortable knowing that these, ghosts, were just figments of my mind, inventions that I brought out to entertain myself. But I wasn¡¯t sure, most of the time I could convince myself, but now and then they seemed more than that, like they were real people, real places. We had reached the garden again and she began to walk round the garden table. There was no mistaking it now, her dress was faded, and her face, looked like it was melting slightly, the details becoming less distinct. Only the eyes remained the same, bright, blue and, oh, so alive. The garden seemed to get darker and the poppies shone red. And then, everything faded and I was awake again, awake and alone, except for Toms¡¯ immobile figure. I went back to the table and stared at the pieces of the mirror again, it was the key out of here, I was sure of that. But it was so far from being done! More than that, I wasn¡¯t even sure that I had all the pieces; when we had arrived in the garden the pieces had been airborne and I still wasn¡¯t sure how far they had gone, I had found most of them around the table, but who knew, they could have flown anywhere. It seemed so much effort to fix the mirror, and for what, where would it lead? I put my head in my hands, I wished I would stop ¡®dreaming¡¯ about people! I wished I could just dream about colours; colours slowly merging and changing, a bright spectrum of light! When it happened it was utter bliss, you didn¡¯t have to think, you could just get lost in it, lost in the ever-changing colours. But I got that type of dream less and less, most often I saw the girl, but there were others, there was the young man with the old eyes. He stood out in my mind and I didn¡¯t know why, he didn¡¯t move much just sat there looking out at the garden with those, slightly dead eyes! When he did walk it was slow and plodding, I honestly don¡¯t know why he gave me the creeps like he did, I shivered and came back to the dull red world that was reality. I found Scar standing next to the table with a broken bit of mirror in his mouth, he had taken to looking for them recently. I was glad. At least in this garden there seemed no way to gain experience points, so there was no need to worry about the ferret would going feral. I took the piece of mirror and started the long process of trying to find where it went. The only thing to help me was that the mirror was not uniform in its thickness, [the top of the mirror was narrower/thinner than the bottom] this meant I could narrow down where the piece might go. It just took time, so much time. On the other hand, I had so much time! At last, I found it; two pieces that went together! I smiled, they fitted perfectly. I reached out and plucked one of the nearby flowers, I had discovered that you could make the flowers ¡®bleed¡¯ a weird red pasty substance. It wasn¡¯t a perfect substitute for glue, but it was the best I had!


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    I groaned; it was my father again. I didn¡¯t want to look at him, he was the only ghost that I recognised, and the only one that spoke. I had started to wonder if he wasn¡¯t a personification of a part of my mind that I was too stubborn to listen to. He sat down across from me with his disapproving look. ¡°Well? You got yourself here!¡± he said at last, ¡°I¡¯ll get myself out too¡± I said, the anger was welling up again, he sighed at me and then said, ¡°you always believed you were the exception; you could never just accept the hand you were dealt, you always had to grasp for something more. Did you ever stop and wonder what would happen if you failed, if you over balanced while reaching for your goal?¡± he shook his head sadly, as he started to fade, ¡°I wanted so much more for you¡­ an ordinary life can still be a good one¡­¡± his voice trailed off and grew fainter as he faded out of existence. I struggled up, and swayed over to the table, I was going to finish this bloody mirror, if only to show that I could.


    The mirror crept on, piece by piece, shard by shard, it took shape and grew, and the pile of broken bits dwindled. It felt like it took years, but how long it actually took I have no idea. But at last I looked down at my handy work, and there were three pieces left, only three, and it would be done! I looked over at Tom, I had better try and get him awake! I didn¡¯t know what was waiting on the other side but it would be better to have him as awake as possible for it.


    The last piece was in, and the world turned, and I felt that dropping feeling in my stomach, we were out!

 The Maze

    I looked at our new surroundings and breathed a sigh of relief; it was the rock walls of a dungeon that greeted us, nothing strange or wacky, just a dungeon! As it turned out it was still a dungeon with a gimmick, it was a maze! Or more accurately a labyrinth. Vast stone passages meandering off in all directions. My only consolation was that it wasn¡¯t swarming with monsters!


    The walls of the maze gave off a faint red glow, that on closer inspection turned out to come from tiny red veins. I had seen something similar in every dungeon I had explored, but those had always been large veins giving off plenty of light to see by; these where finer than hairs and only filled the labyrinth with a sort of hazy red gloom. I was wondering if I could find some way to make a torch when the ceiling lit up! It turned out not to be a ceiling but a sky! Above the walls was a vast abyss of blackness, that every now and then would light up as a burning red streak of light made its way across it! It was not lightning, it moved too slowly for that, it was more like a shooting star, only much brighter and closer than any shooting star that I had ever seen. Every flash was followed by a grinding, cracking sound, and it would set the walls of the labyrinth echoing. The sound startled me more than the light.


    Before we set off to explore the maze I scratched a mark into the dungeon wall, no matter how large this maze was, if given enough time we would end up back were we had started, and I did not intend to wander round in a loop without knowing about it!


    We had not been in the labyrinth long when we come across our first monster. We had just entered a long strait passage when the sky lit up, allowing me to see the full length of the passage, about a third of the way down this passage stood a young minotaur. I froze, but the minotaur was facing the wall and seemed unaware of our existence, as the light faded out, I backed us out of the strait and into the little passage we had been in before. Then, making sure Tom stayed put, I looked round the corner. The minotaur was a juvenile, [his head was only about chest hight] but I still didn¡¯t like our chances if it came to a head on fight. Another flash lit up the passage and I saw that the minotaur was grazing on some moss that grew from the labyrinth wall, he seemed unaware of the flashing light or rumbling noises that came at irregular intervals. His horns were short and bent slightly forward, I got the impression that they were very sharp. I pulled my head back and looked at Tom; wondering if he could tame a minotaur, if he could tame a dungeon monster at all, there had been Danny but I wasn¡¯t sure if he had come from a dungeon or not. That didn¡¯t matter at the moment anyway, in Toms¡¯ current state I doubted he could tame a field mouse! I would have to deal with this on my own.


    After some thought I cast fear on the minotaur, [and hoped he was less than level 10] I would have cast fury, but there didn¡¯t seem to be anything around for it to get angry at, and the last thing I wanted was an angry minotaur charging round the corner and bumping into us in an enraged state. He froze when the spell hit, and stood perfectly still, a leg muscle trembled and sweat ran off his nose. Then, with a snort he bolted down the passage away from us! I smiled as the light faded to darkness once more; it was so satisfying when things worked!


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    The labyrinth went on; winding, and meandering aimlessly. There was no roof on top of the walls and the idea of climbing up the wall and getting a sort of over view of the labyrinth had come to me almost immediately, but I had dismissed it as being too easy; that there would be some sort of trap, or something worse waiting for me. [that is what I told myself, the truth is; I don¡¯t like climbing, it always seems to end in me falling] But as the labyrinth wound on the idea started to seem better and better. Finally, I came to the conclusion that it was stupid not to try it. So, I stopped us in one of the small, abandoned passages, and tried climbing. The walls were rough and not that difficult to climb, but when I got to the top, I found the advantage not quite what I had hoped. I couldn¡¯t see far in any direction, all I could see was the tops of other walls going off in all directions, and I could only see that when the light was streaking across the sky. But the biggest problem was the fairies; they arrived while I was still trying to see, if I could see anything. When I first saw them, they looked like dandelion seeds floating gently in the breeze, [ but, of course they were glowing red] when they got closer I heard the whine of their wings! And when they were almost on top of me, I saw what they actually were; vaguely humanoid shapes with wings on their backs that were really too small for them. The wings were working very hard to keep them in the air, and they let off a high-pitched whine that was worse than a mosquito, they didn¡¯t glow like the poppies, it was the air around them was glowing. There was one other thing that I noticed; they were carrying pointy weapons! I decided [very quickly] to get down from the wall. A few of the fairies followed me down, but they were not fast-moving creatures, I swatted one out the air as it came towards me and felt a stinging sensation in my fingers. I glanced at my hand, and stamped on the fairy; its¡¯ light went out, and I got an XP notification. I looked up in time to see Scar run up the wall and catch one of the fairies out of the air, between us we made fast work of the rest!


    Telling time underground is something of an art form. Put it another way; it is sheer guess work. The goblins counted time in cycles, it took 6 cycles for a dungeon to grow, secure territory, and reinforce itself. You could tell what stage a dungeon was in if you knew the signs, I didn¡¯t know the signs. This meant that we kept going; wondering through the labyrinth until my feet began to blister, and Tom, who was not in a good way physically, refused to go on. I found a dead end on one of the meandering parts of the labyrinth and managed to drag him in there, and then, before I collapsed, I cut the mark into the wall so as not to forget if we needed to leave in a hurry. I sat with my back against the rough stone wall and tried to relax. The faint red glow that came from the walls was actually quite nice, it was warm and calm, and gave the feeling of darkness without really being dark. But just as I started to think that sleep was possible one of the ¡®shooting stars¡¯ would illuminate the sky and I would be back on edge again. At last tiredness won and I fell asleep.

 To the core!

    I did not sleep well; my body might have been on the point of collapse but my mind was wound as tightly as it could be, and kept giving me restless dreams. That is why, when I first heard the sounds, I put it down to a dream, but eventually I got up and investigated. I ended up climbing the wall behind us [being careful to puma-crawl onto the top to try and avoid the fairies] I made it to the edge of the wall and looked into the darkness on the other side, a moment later a flash of light showed the room below me. The room was one of the long straight passage ways. Here and there the walls were hairy with that strange moss stuff. But what got my attention were the minotaur, about 20 of them, some grazing on the walls, some mock fighting, and some just looking on! I stayed frozen in a sort of horror, even as a tantalising idea popped into my mind, I quickly discarded it as stupid. And then backing up I, very carefully, fell down the wall.


    It was as I was picking myself up that I saw the mark I had made, it was almost gone, I stepped up to get a better look, but even as I did, I realized my error; the dungeon was repairing itself! I could leave all the marks I wanted, and they would be gone by the time we came back to them! The idea that had popped into my head popped back into my head, and this time I was angry enough to listen to it!


    I climbed back up to the top of the wall and, lying flat, looked down at the minotaur¡¯s. I ignored the three biggest and settled on one of the medium sized ones. Although medium in size for this group he would have towered over any human. As I watch he moved in towards the centre of the group, perfect! With my target selected I took a deep breath and cast fury. And then I watched as the destruction unfolded. Taking down a minotaur is no joke, lots of adventures, even good adventures, would struggle to deal with more than two, now here I was taking on 20 or so! I cast fury a few more times into the fight raging below me. We have an expression in Elba, ¡®drunk on power¡¯ I think that that is what I must have been, but can you blame me? I had never been able to win anything, I had always just been the inventory unable to affect the world, but in that moment; on top of the wall in the labyrinth I was controlling the fight from the shadows, I was doing what no swords men could do! I had said that I could be an adventurer and I could! In that moment I felt I could do whatever I wanted, intoxicated on power! That is why when Scar crawled up the wall to see what the noise was about, I threw him off into the whirling mess below. It happened in a moment, and I regretted it almost at once, but it was too late then. Far too late.


    What did I tell Tom? I could hardly say that I had thrown Scar to his death while dizzy on power, could I? in the end I just told him that Scar had lost his balance while walking along the wall and that when I had gotten to the top of the wall to see what had happened it was already over. I expected Tom to ask for details, or to simply not believe me. In fact, he didn¡¯t say anything, just sat there staring, and then he opened his inventory and pulled out a bunch of poppies, I saw his eyes glaze over, and I knew that he no longer saw me; he was once more in some waking dream. Well l couldn¡¯t leave him there and carry on exploring on my own, I was not sure if I could find my way back, and there was no way I could carry him, so I stayed, waiting for him to wake up. Eventually I climbed over the wall to inspect the passage where the minotaur¡¯s had been. The minotaurs had gone after the strange goings on and the passage lay deserted. It looked just the same as any other we had walked down since we got to this level, there was nothing to show what had happened only a few hours earlier, or almost nothing; I was just about to climb back over the wall to wait by Tom when a flash of light showed something at my feet. I bent down and picked it up, it was a thin leather collar with small metal studs on it. I was so used to Scar waring it that, in my mind it was just part of him. I thought of giving it to Tom, and then I thought I had better wait until the rawness of Scars death had subsided a little. I opened my inventory and placed it inside, and it was then that I found the mirror, the mirror that I had so painstakingly put back together; I had assumed that it had vanished when we had gotten to level 5, but here it was. I took it out of my inventory and held it, the cracks seemed to be gone and it was giving off a strong blueish-white light, by the light of the mirror, I could see something painted on the wall; reflecting the blueish-white light someone had written;


    ¡®Beware that the light you have is not darkness,


    because if the light you have is really darkness, how deep is that darkness?¡¯


    About two paces past where the words ended, a stone in the rough wall had been painted with the same reflective paint. Ignoring the words for now I reached out and touched the stone, it felt solid enough, I pressed in on it and felt it give a little. I flet a rush of excitement at having discovered something. Putting the mirror back into my inventory I used both hands to press harder, and, as the stone gave way, I felt a dropping turning sensation in my stomach. It was a feeling I knew all too well, it was the feeling of the next level!


    Level 6; the core!


    Toms¡¯ body slumped to the floor beside me, still passed out from his resent dose of poppies. We had materialised in a cave; the rock walls were not unlike the large cavern where the goblins lived. There was a difference though; not far from where I stood the walls were covered in red veins, and a little farther in I could see the dungeon core! It was huge, larger than my old house on the surface! But strangely misshaped; most cores have a uniform shape, some look like cut jewels, some are more like spherical orbs. But this core looked more like a jiggered chunk of rock. The core was slightly translucent, shadows and light seemed to be moving inside the it, so that it was not pure red. Instead, it ranged from places that where so dark they were almost black, to places so light they were almost pink. Now and then an arc of red light would shoot out and ground itself in the vein covered walls.


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    If you are ever around something with a high level, and you really concentrate, you can feel the level difference. From where I was standing, I didn¡¯t even need to concentrate, I could feel the power coming off the core and washing over me like small waves.


    And then it spoke! I had never thought of a dungeon speaking, but some monsters could speak, so why not a dungeon? ¡°It has been a long time since I last had visitors.¡± It said. The voice was not at all human; it had a high ringing quality, like glass being struck and vibrating, but at the same time, under that was a deeper note, the sort of thing you hear from avalanches. The voice came from everywhere; it came from all over the core and it came from the walls, like a hundred voices all speaking at once, all the same voice, but all slightly different at the same time. ¡°I must say I am impressed that you made it as far as you did with the poor grasp you have of your class.¡± I had been unsettled by the core speaking; and that feeling of being off balance made me angry ¡°what do you mean ¡®poor grasp¡¯? I became an adventure despite my class I-¡± I was cut off by the core ¡°You have a great class, you have a dreamers¡¯ class, a class that is wasted on you. If you lived for a thousand years you would never unlock the true potential of it!¡± ¡°I am an illusionist.¡± I said flatly, the core seemed amused, ¡°what is an illusionist but a dreamer; a dreamer who can share his dream with others, someone who can make others see the world as he wants them to see it. Yes¡­ definitely a dreamer class. But you don¡¯t have the power to use it!¡± And then he laughed, hollow and menacing, ¡°but at least you have the potential to dream, unlike your friend. Oh, he can bend the world to his hand, but he has no dream. He lacks the ability to dream. Like so many creatures! But you¡­ ah, so much wasted potential,¡± it sighed almost wistfully, ¡°Why does the Great Architect give these stupid creatures abilities they can¡¯t understand or properly use?¡± ¡°Why do you keep saying I can¡¯t unlock my ¡®potential¡¯ that I can¡¯t, ¡®use¡¯ it?!¡± I said angrily. ¡°You don¡¯t even have enough manna to create a solid core the size of a thimble! Even if you lived for a thousand years, even if you where the greatest human warrior alive, you would have no comprehension of true power!¡± the voice changed now to a sneering one ¡°you call these grains of sand dungeons! All you have to do is look into the night sky and you will see the real dungeons! Up there the real battle goes on, between the stars, so far away from you that you don¡¯t even know it is happening! What is a planet but a star waiting to be born! And what is a star but a Dungeon core that has grown! When all the cores on a planet are defeated and there is one Dungeon, then the real fight begins! That is real power; manna condensed into crystal larger than a planet! But enough of this nonsense. We are wasting time!¡± I looked for some response to the dismissive way the dungeon talked, ¡°If dungeons really are so powerful, how come I made it this far? How, if you are so powerful, did I survive?¡± There was silence. And then the core started to laugh, at first it was far away and then it came closer, it was all around me, it was a strange laugh, not just amused but properly laugh; high and jingling but at the same time low and grinding. ¡°Do you think that you got here by your own skill? I was curious about you, a human with a dreamer¡¯s class¡­ I wanted to see you for myself.¡± ¡°Are you saying you helped us get here?¡± ¡°of course. Don¡¯t feel too disheartened, you have made it through, even with help that is an impressive feat. So, I am going to offer you something, something you have always wanted; a Class change.¡± I stared at the core in surprised silence. ¡°You can change my class?¡± I asked, ¡°Oh yes.¡± I felt a thrill of excitement run through me. But following close on its heals a feeling of unease; if something seems too good to be true, then it probably is. ¡°Why¡± I asked, ¡°why would you do this?¡± the shadows inside the core seemed to move and shift, as if thoughts where floating round inside the core ¡°As I said it is a ¡®reword for getting to the final level.¡¯ But that isn¡¯t really what you are asking, is it? You think this sounds too good to be true, you want to know what strings are attached?¡± ¡°Yes¡± I said with the uneasy feeling that the core was looking into my mind. ¡°Well, I will tell you, because I see a lot of myself in you, I was despised by my father too. I was a star then, he did not believe in me and because of that he shattered me, and threw me down here! What you see here is just a shard of my former self. So you see, I have a great deal of empathy for you. But ultimately, you are right; everything has a cost, it is the nature of the world. I believe you have a saying that goes; ¡®you need eggs to make an omelette.¡¯ And to change a class, I need blood, human blood, and a lot of it.¡± In the silence that followed Tom let out a gentle groan. ¡°Just look at him; is it really life without a dream?¡± I looked at Tom, and then at the core, ¡°it really isn¡¯t that high of a price. Besides, he has lost his pets, wouldn¡¯t it be kinder to end it for him here?¡± I stood there, looking between Tom and the Core. It would kill Tom, I was sure of that. But was that really so bad? It was hardly like he was even functioning at the moment any way! I couldn¡¯t remember the last time I had had a proper conversation with him! But part of me was horrified at the idea, at how wrong it seemed. What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to choose? I have always tried to rise above the hand I had been dealt; to be something more than my class. But how do you do that in this situation, is accepting a re-deal rising above¡­ or is it rising above to die a death that no one will remember? The more I thought the less certain I was about what I should do. And so, I stood there looking from the core to Tom, and from Tom to the Core.


    The end


    Wait! The end? That¡¯s the end?! How is that the end? Well, to the three readers who made it this far; the ending itself really does not matter, after all this is just a fantasy story, in a few months¡¯ time you will have forgotten you ever read it. So, perhaps the question is not ¡®how can this be the ending¡¯ but rather ¡®how would you end it?¡¯ If you were placed in this situation how would your story end, what would you choose, and why? Because one day that might be important.