Saga of the Soul Dungeon

“If you throw the pebble in the pond and the rings start circulating that much wider, you've done things and created things for people that they didn't think they'd ever be able to do. That excites me.”

- Mindy Grossman

==Zidaun==

The path remained the same as we passed in the low places between the hills. Small sections had been carved into the hills, the dirt and stone exposed. The roots of the grasses went a few feet deep. The pale roots contrasted against the deep brown of the earth, and they clutched onto the soil like the hands of drowning men. The shadows shifted beneath the flowing clouds, making the grass and the roots seem to writhe.

And then the clouds would pass for a moment and the day would return. The grass was but grass, the roots but roots. And the world was bright and cheerful once again. Still, in shadow or light, we were careful.

So far we hadn’t run into any new monsters, but the ones we did encounter were different in other ways.

We were able to scare off a group of rats by posturing and making loud noises. The giant cockroaches were aggressive if we got too close, but only those that noticed us. The rest remained in a giant mound of dirt, where various holes lead into its interior. In the distance, we occasionally saw swarms of mice traveling over the ground. They would eat everything that was in their way. If a party didn’t have good crowd control, they might actually be dangerous. However, the large groups were also very easy to spot from a distance. We didn’t see any close to the road, either.

The various encounters were more common than I would expect outside a dungeon, but they felt like traveling through the wilderness. It felt like someone had compressed a random section of wilderness into a smaller area.

The only real sign this was a dungeon, were the few times we saw very obvious pit-fall traps. They were barely covered, and had dirt sides. They were only about five feet deep as well. Only someone who wasn’t paying any attention would fall into one. Some beginners might fall in while fighting a monster, I supposed. Hopefully it would help them learn some situational awareness. The dirt on the bottom was soft enough that it shouldn’t pose any danger on its own.

Ultimately, the path lead us gently down a slope until we reached an expansive flat area. Emerging from between a pair of hills, we could see a new area of water.

In front of us were a series of large ponds, a few hundred feet across in total. Small sections of land and reed festooned mud sectioned off the individual ponds. Small rivulets of clear water flowed from one to the next. To the right the arc of the walls was barely visible, the blue matching the sky of a bright day. Clouds appeared from nothing before being carried off by the wind. They raced away from the wall, soon followed by more clouds in their own turn.

A stream fed into the ponds from the left, presumably the same stream we had seen leaking from the aqueduct. It gently flowed into the ponds. The water of the ponds was mostly still, though slight distortions moved across the water in the blowing wind. Reeds, in various shades of green, waved with the motion of the wind where they emerged from the water, or bunched together in thick tangles near the edges.

The path proceeded through the middle of the ponds, where it continued on a series of wooden boardwalks. The boards were a grayish brown, rough with the weathering of many seasons. Posts of wood went downwards to anchor themselves below the water. There were no railings or guides.

And to the right the ponds simply stopped.

A large amount of water dropped from where the ponds met empty air. More water fell than the stream could explain, obvious more was fed into the system from somewhere. The water fell into a yawning abyss. No sound came after the water fell off the edge. If there was a bottom, it was so far below that the sound couldn’t reach this far. Instead, the vast gulf was simply filled with impenetrable mist. It roiled like boiling water, just a few feet below the level of the surrounding ponds.

In the middle of the mist was a column of stone, like an island in a turbulent sea. Trees and other greenery concealed further detail. It rose a short distance above the land surrounding the misty waves, connected by a bridge to the boardwalks. Struts of aged wood held the bridge up, forming an arch with overlapping supports. Despite the supports, the wood of the bridge swayed gently in the omnipresent wind. Like the boardwalk, the wood was pale and weathered. However, the bridge had railings, though the thin wood seemed insufficient with an uncertain abyss on either side.

Farther to the right the abyss ended with a series of sheer cliffs which lead upward, until they merged with the false sky. The cliffs were host to masses of mossy greenery. Scraggly trees leaned outward from the tops and were wedged into tiny outcroppings, their roots were a gnarled mass that clung with steadfast determination to even the tiniest gaps in the stone. Small trickles of water flowed down, leaving tracks of darker glimmering stone amid the verdant green moss. Small overhangs of stone dripped water down into the mist below, like a child biting into juicy fruit, the juices flowing down their chin.

We stopped, overlooking the scenery. Taking in another natural wonder in this compressed approximation of the real world.

“We’ll need to be careful with the bridge,” Inda said. “I should be able to keep us from falling if needed.”

I nodded.

“We will take a few precautions.” I said. “I can make sure that all the supports are securely anchored. I am not expecting it to simply collapse on us. Not in this dungeon. However, better to be safe, regardless.”

An ordinary fall wouldn’t kill us, but who knew what lay below the mist. Dungeons could, and did, twist the laws of the world in strange ways. I might be possible to have a truly bottomless pit here. Or the bottom could be full of some very nasty traps.

“Gurek,” I said, “unknown territory, so keep up the front. Already seen attacks from the water in the sewers, so probably more of that.”

He just nodded. It wasn’t anything he didn’t know already. I would keep up my vigilance regardless.

We moved forward, following the path until it met the ponds. The ponds reflected the moving clouds, subtly distorted by the still water. I could feel the water, earth, and wood. For all the appearance of age, the pathway’s wood was solid, and the wooden supports were firmly anchored into stone below. However, the joints where the wood were connected, were loose. The joints were still strong enough to prevent the structure from collapsing, but they were designed to move.

“Heads up,” I said. “The structure is secure, but it will move as we use it. Expect shifting footing.”

The water near the edges was fairly shallow for the moment. Falling into it would be merely embarrassing, as long as we weren’t harassed by monsters. Gurek took his time, the wood creaking with each step as the structure shifted back and forth under our footsteps.

We skipped over a small section with a missing board. I could feel a corresponding board quietly moldering beneath the waters, where it was buried within the mud. Algal blooms floated in the clear water, and mats of green circled the edges of the ponds.

Something stirred within a deeper section. Disturbed water pushed its way up, before something followed it.

“Left, incoming,” I shouted.

We stopped moving, each of us prepared.

A large beetle rose to the surface of the water. It was five feet long, and stayed about ten feet from us.

Misty Diving Beetle

Monstrous

Level 8

“Level eight,” I said.

The shell of the beetle was a deep brown, turned almost black from the glistening water. The edges of its shell and between sections were a translucent, almost luminous, yellow. Its head had a pair of compound eyes on each side and its mandibles looked sharp, but rather stubby. It was using its two front pairs legs to keep afloat. Its back legs rose into the air behind it.

The back legs each formed an almost perfect curve. Each one was covered by innumerable bristles. Bubbles of air and large drops of water were trapped. Mana began to gather around the back legs.

“Magic, back legs,” I warned.

We waited, we needed to see what it would do.

The magic released and the air and water joined together. Mist spread from the beetle, wafting toward us. We held our breaths, but there was no sign the mist was dangerous on it own. However, it quickly grew thicker, obscuring our sight.

I could sense something new in the water. The beetle was beating its legs together, sending a clicking noise through the water. In response, I felt the water disturbed heavily, and several things started to swim toward the surface.

“More incoming, same pond,” I said.

The moderately shallow edge of the pond was barely visible through the thick mist. Vague shapes could be seen under the water, but it was impossible to tell what was real and what was merely formed by a fleeting congregation of thicker mist.

Soon enough something swam into the shallow part of the pond.

Larval Misty Diving Beetle

Monstrous

Level 6

It was followed by several others, even as the first one leapt out of the shallows in an attempt to attack.

Each larva had a curving body shape, the head and tail both arcing upwards. The body was a dull brown. Its six legs were segmented into several sections, while the tail ended in two small protrusions, and its head had two massive and sharp mandibles. The two ends of the mandible slightly overlapped. Anything caught between them would be speared through by the pointed ends.

When they jumped up, the tail surged with mana, pushing the water backwards behind them. In turn, this caused them to jet forward, where we were ready for them.

The first one aimed for Inda, and her sabre pierced into it even as she danced to the side. Its carapace sliced apart and it screamed, even as it overshot its mark and splashed twitching into the pool behind us.

I kept an absent sense of it, even as Gurek and I dealt with the others that were attacking.

I sidestepped and slammed my elbow and knee into a passing larva. The dual spikes penetrated deep, each injecting poison into the wound. The two spikes halted its momentum, tearing its exoskeleton from the force. The larva twitched and screamed as it dropped to the wood below, but my new poison appeared to paralyze it as it stopped moving quickly.

I prepared to deal with any other threats, but Gurek had already dealt with the larva that attacked him by bisecting it into two different halves.

The larva dealt with by me and Inda never tried to attack again. Each died shortly after our respective attacks.

The mist started to clear, leading to the sight of a very agitated beetle. I had the definite sense that it was not pleased with us killing the larva.

It dived back beneath the water, disappearing for a moment, even as we carefully watched. An instant later it exploded out of the water, its two back legs pushed magic out behind it and its shell unfolded to reveal a pair of gossamer wings. The wings fluttered as it used the combination of back facing thrust and flight to propel itself into an aerial charge.

It surged toward the middle of our group, between Inda and I. Each of us anticipated it, and stepped out of its way. I struck downward with a clenched fist, aiming for its left eye. Inda deflected its attack slightly with a firmly held knife in one hand, while her blade cut cleanly through all the legs on one side.

Under the effect of a now unbalanced thrust, it spun in the air like a top. Its rapidly moving, and rapidly spinning, carapace struck the surface of the pond and it skipped like a rock. One, two, three times, until it skipped a final time and fell out over the edge and into the endless mists.

We waited for a little while, but it never returned.