A Soldier's Life

Chapter 150: Dungeon Wanderings

Maveith drank the healing potion, and his face instantly relaxed. He must have been in intense pain as a euphoric expression came across his face. He started to rotate his torso, a smile coming across his face. He picked up his hammer and swung it in an arc above his head, grinning as he did so. His deep voice echoed in the room, “Thank you, Eryk. I can help you fight the dungeon creatures now.”

Maveith’s eyes focused on the bear steak. He licked his dark blue stained lips, “Do you want me to cook that?” I pulled out our packs and the thermal stone, and Maveith got to work cooking. “A shame we don’t have salt and pepper,” Maveith said regretfully.

“We do,” I said and deposited one of three five-pound bags of sea salt and the bag of peppercorns on the mossy ground. Maveith’s eyes were bugging out of his face. I explained not using them earlier, “I did not see the value in flavoring our meager offerings with the company. If I had revealed this in the tavern, others would have become aware of my larger dimensional space. Castile was able to keep my larger space from being known by the company.”

“Castile knows?” Maveith said, taking the salt and pepper reverently. I think the appearance of the two common spices surprised him more than the large elven tablet table. At least he was more appreciative of them.

“Castile, Delmar, and Adrian,” I paused. “Just Castile and Adrian now.” Maveith carefully counted peppercorns to grind like he was already rationing them. “I have two more bags of salt, but that is all the peppercorns I have.” Maveith nodded but focused on crushing the peppercorns and not losing any of the spice.

While Maveith cooked, I tried one of the berries. It tasted like blueberries, but the juice was thicker with the consistency of syrup. I started eating them by the handful, believing they were not poisonous. Maveith charged the thermal stone, cut the steak into one-inch cubes, lightly seasoned them, and then seared all six sides, forming a brown crust. He handed me the first one, and it practically melted in my mouth with an explosion of flavor, the center just slightly pink. I was unsure whether bears from the dungeon carried trichinosis like bears from my world, but I figured with magic and increased stats we would be alright, and Maveith did not seem to worry so I didn’t either. I had forgotten how salt and pepper magnified your taste buds. The flavors were dancing on my taste buds and lingered after I swallowed the first piece.

Maveith tried one next, and soon they were gone, and he was working on the second batch to finish off the steak. “We should harvest the bear after this. This is some of the best bear meat I have ever cooked,” Maveith voiced eagerly while turning the cubes.

I let Maveith have most of the second cooking of the bear meat, and then we picked up camp and headed to harvest the bear. It had been almost two hours since I had killed it, and I was wondering if it would still be there. “Where does that lead?” Maveith asked of the side passage halfway to the bear mound chamber.

“I did not explore it yet. Best to keep things simple and explore one room at a time,” I counseled. Not that I was an experienced dungeon delver myself. I immediately knew something was wrong as we reached the chamber. The bear should have been visible, but I did not see the carcass.

“Are those apple trees?” Maveith said excitedly, not seeing the worry on my face about the missing bear.

“Wait, Maveith. The bear is gone. Stay here,” I stepped into the room, expecting the fire bear to have respawned. I circled along the outer wall to the other side of the chamber. The mound had a cave entrance opposite our door. From a distance, I tossed in a glowstone and it was not very deep and also empty—just a shallow den.

“It is fine, Maveith. You can enter,” Maveith immediately plucked an apple and then crunched into it, chewing and savoring it. I had a cynical thought. Without Konstantin here, I had Maveith as a poison taster. I knew I should not be thinking that way as I considered him a friend, but I could not help it. “Pick some apples, and let’s go back to the blueberry room.”

“Why? Shouldn’t we be exploring further in the dungeon?” Maveith asked, his jaws working loudly on his second apple.

“I just want to check and see if the bodies are gone. The dungeon reclaimed the bear quickly, but we were in the blueberry room for half a day, and the bodies never disappeared,” I voiced my thoughts. I dropped some dirty socks from my space under one of the apple trees to see if the dungeon reclaimed them by the time we returned.

Maveith soon had forty apples on a tarp, and we retreated from the room. I paused in the corridor, Maveith following suit. The socks under the tree slowly sank into the earth and disappeared. It had only taken the dungeon seconds to claim them after we vacated the room. “Did you see that?” I asked Maveith.

“I did.” He thought for a moment, “We shouldn’t leave anything behind,” he noted while eating another apple. I nodded, thinking we had been lucky not to leave the tablet table or barrel of berries behind while exploring. It was also somewhat spooky. Could the dungeon just absorb us at any time? I knew I now had a new source for my nightmares.

We returned to the blueberry room but did not enter. The bodies of the shape changers were gone. They had not revived, as there was no movement in the open room and nowhere to hide. “I think the berries bushes are full again,” Maveith noted excitedly. “I stripped every bush to fill the barrel, but they are flush with berries again!” That seemed awfully fast, but then again, dungeons drew on aether from magical ley lines.

I decided not to enter, and we returned to the fire bear room. The apple trees that Maveith had picked had much smaller apples, like they were in the middle of growing, compared to the large fist-sized ones he had picked already. The question was, how long did it take for the creatures to respawn? If we never left a room, would they never return? No, I remember my first trip into a dungeon, and there were special safe rooms like the entry room.

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“Maveith, we need to look for the others and find a safe room. It is a room like where we entered with the elvish writing on the wall.”

Maveith abruptly let out a long, wet-sounding fart. He rushed to remove his leather leggings and squat nearby. Squatting, he said, “I am fine. I just ate too many berries and apples,” he said as disturbing sounds echoed in the chamber as he emptied his bowels. He probably had eaten a few pounds of berries and apples to go with his bear steak. I waited and harvested some apples while Maveith groaned, painting the earthen floor. I decided to stay away from that particular area. I knew my own time of having a substantial bowel movement was in the near future.

I distracted myself by thinking of our needs. We needed water, so we needed to find a room with water. My twenty gallons might last us twenty days at most of heavy activity. But weren’t apples mostly water? There had to be two or three hundred apples on the trees, maybe more. Maveith finished his business, and we spent a few hours harvesting three bushels of apples.

Picking the apples kind of made me miss Ginger, but I was glad she had not come with us. If she had survived to make it to the library, she most likely would have been used to feed the company. Maveith looked much healthier and was moving without any pain.

With all the apples in my storage, I announced, “As we explore, we will always take the right corridor.” Maveith nodded in agreement, and we started walking down the corridor opposite the fire bear den.

Forty strides, and we come to a T intersection. Both corridors looked identical. We turned right, as agreed, and came to a small room, maybe thirty feet across. We studied the room without entering it. The floor was a dark blue marble, and only the ceiling illuminated the room. Each of the three walls had a sizeable alcove covered in thick vines. The vines were dotted with small red flowers that had yellow veins. Maveith was standing over me as we both took everything in.

“I don’t see any creatures,” Maveith’s voice echoes into the room. His large hammer was in his hand.

“The vines are fairly thick, so something could be hiding there—or even the vines themselves are dangerous,” I said, remembering the shambling mounds. “Are the plants familiar to you?” I asked my companion.

He hesitated, “No. I have not seen anything like them. There is also no exit from this room.”

“It could be a safe room,” I guessed. “But I say we don’t enter and turn around,” I looked up at Maveith, who nodded in agreement. We left the vine room undisturbed and followed the corridor back to the intersection, taking the other route.

Maveith noticed first, “The corridor is turning. I think we are slowing turning right.”

“I don’t know if that is a bad thing or not,” I muttered, unhappy with how little I knew about dungeons. I lamented never reading any books on dungeons in the Duchess’ library. I lost count of steps after one hundred as we followed the slowly curving corridor. It eventually straightened out, but there was no end in sight. I was guessing we had walked almost a quarter mile without seeing a side corridor or a room.

“Should we turn around?” Maveith asked, also feeling uncomfortable at the monotonous scenery.

I considered before replying, “Let’s see this one to the end.” After another three hundred steps, it finally looked like a room ahead. I think I was more worried now about the size of the dungeon and finding the others from the company.

“Water,” Maveith intoned behind me, and I heard it too. We approached the entry and were amazed at the site beyond. A massive domed room, maybe three hundred feet across, was being fed by a waterfall at its zenith. The waterfall created a misty environment that resulted in a myriad of rainbows from the illuminated ceiling. A large pool dominated the center of the room, and waist-high grass surrounded it the pool.

“Do you see any creatures?” I asked, studying the room intently.

Maveith had over a foot of height on me, “There is something in the grass.” The sound of the water splashing into the pool prevented us from being able to hear anything.

A head suddenly appeared above the grass. It looked like a weird giant chicken with a yellow and red crest of feathers. It flapped its wings, which were featherless, leathery, and dark gray. “Maybe something bigger in here feeds on them?” I guessed.

A second of the oversized chickens raised their heads elsewhere in the grass. It turned to face us, and Maveith’s large palm covered my face. His hand smelled foul as he dragged me backward. I was too surprised to resist. “Those are not chickens, Eryk,” his voice was somewhat panicky. I let him pull me almost twenty feet before freeing myself from his grasp, spitting the foul taste out of my mouth.

“What, Maveith?” I asked for an explanation of his rough and unpleasant treatment.

“Cockatrices.” Maveith rasped out in his deep but worried voice. My blank stare had him explain further, “They have the gaze of a Medusa. They can turn you to stone, petrify your flesh.”

I started to look back, but Maveith grabbed my shoulders and prevented me. “I have seen them hooded and for sale in the city of Balsa. They are a plague on the plains, and the nobility hunts them for sport and for their meat for banquets. You either need to hunt them blindfolded or with magical sight. With that waterfall in there, we have no chance of fighting them. We must seek another path,” he implored.

I nodded in agreement. “How many did you see?” I asked the goliath, who was still uneasy.

“At least three, but the grass was high. There could be many more. Please tell me we are not entering that room,” Maveith pleaded.

I gave it some thought and finally nodded. I knew what a medusa was from mythology and did not want to be turned into a statue. “There was a corridor on the far side of the room. It may be our only option.”

“Can’t we just leave the dungeon?” Maveith intoned, still clearly upset at the cockatrices.

I reminded him, “No. We need to find Castile and the kettle of souls to return to Caelora. Otherwise, we will be swarmed by specters.”

We began the walk back to the fire bear room. We waited and confirmed it had not been revived before entering. The apples had already started regrowing on the trees. Instead of returning to the shapeshifter room, we turned right down the unexplored corridor. The corridor ended in a Y intersection, and I was glad we had more options. We took the right corridor and soon reached a rectangular room.

“Well, this doesn’t look quite as bad as cockatrices,” Maveith muttered merrily, his fright evaporating from seeing the cockatrices. He pulled his hammer off his belt loop.

“Maveith, I hate spiders,” I bemoaned at our misfortune. The entire room was covered from floor to ceiling in thick webbing that shimmered with the illumination from the ceiling and floor. The thick strands vibrated slightly from the unseen spiders hiding within.

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