This Used To Be About Dungeons: Volume 1 by Alexander Wales

Author:Alexander Wales [Wales, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wraithmarked Creative, LLC
Published: 2023-09-12T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23 - This One Is Actually About Dungeons Too

The entrance to the dungeon was the same as it had been before, a tube of packed earth, but when it opened out into the first room, there was nothing like a house or building. Instead, it was a little grotto, with stalactites hanging from the ceiling and a trickle of water coming down. The only path forward was through the stalactites, where the light from the lanterns could barely reach.

<Party chat only,> said Alfric. <No sense alerting anything to our presence.>

<Let me know when I should play my song,> said Verity.

<Packs down first,> said Alfric as he slipped his off and onto the ground. He drew his sword and shield, getting comfortable with the grip of them and changing his stance. He was always rather serious, Verity thought, but here, it seemed to suit him more.

Verity slipped her own bag off and placed it on top of a rock, where she hoped it would stay relatively dry. There was practically nothing in her pack aside from her waterskin, some eggy bread Hannah had baked that morning, and some nuts Isra had brought. Her lute was already in her hands, with the finger flute tied tight against the calf of her left leg, giving her as many fingers as she pleased. The lute itself was tuned and ready to go, with a few tests of it before they went in.

Verity was wearing a helm, the same as Mizuki, and had practiced singing with it on. She didn’t look nearly so ridiculous though. In the mirror, she’d thought that she could pull off the look of a battle bard.

<Plan for a longer engagement this time,> said Alfric. He turned to the others and made sure that they were ready. <Song now, please.>

Verity had prepared a few songs and chose one of strength in the face of the foreboding, whose lyrics fit with the dark, cavernous dungeon better than the other songs she had on hand. It was a song of mythology, harking back to a very old story of the first person to ever delve a dungeon, Helgi of Amanth, though told in a somewhat more whimsical way than was orthodox. Helgi was almost certainly apocryphal, so Verity felt no shame in making changes.

They heard the first monster before they saw it, as Alfric was making his way beside the small trickle of water that went along the tunnel. It was a sound like a thousand crickets in the night, a buzzing that was so loud it was almost painful. The light affixed to Alfric’s chest illuminated only a larger cave with a pool of water and two more tunnels coming off it, and he crouched low, shield forward, until he was at the edge of the pool. Moving carefully, as though not to disturb the ground, he touched the tip of his sword into the pool and sent electricity arcing over the surface of it.

Almost at once, a creature rose up, breaching the water and roaring with the same buzzing sound, now even louder and higher-pitched.

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