Chapter 79: 5.3 – What Lies Beneath

Robin and the others cautiously approached the place where Khavren had vanished. The bard was suddenly very aware of the clammy feel of the air around them. Wait. Was that a hint of a breeze?

‘Teleport?’ Jhess asked as they neared the space.

‘Unlikely,’ Drev replied. ‘I didn’t see any of the usual visual effects that accompany those kinds of magics.’

‘It’s an illusion.’ Robin ran his hand carefully along the ground. His instincts were telling him he was right in this. ‘Probably covering some kind of deadfall trap. Watch your step. It might not be the only one.’

He pulled a walking stick from his personal storage space. It wasn’t quite the ten-foot-pole of adventuring or proverbial fame, but it would do to test the ground around him for illusory pitfalls.

A few moments of careful tapping and he located the edge of the pit that had swallowed Khavren.

‘Khavren?’ he called down to the knight. ‘You all right down there?’

There wasn’t any answer.

‘Hold on,’ he said to the rest of the party.

Robin got down on his stomach and carefully felt his way to the edge. He could feel the hole and lightly ran his fingers around the edges. It was wider than he expected, and surprisingly smooth.

Carefully he extended his reach into the darkness. When nothing happened, he pulled himself closer and risked putting his head through the illusion for a better look. Perhaps fifteen feet below him, he spotted the crumpled form of the knight.

‘He’s down here,’ Robin said, pulling himself back up to look at the rest of the party. ‘I can’t tell if he’s unconscious or dead. He’s just sort of in a heap.’

‘We need to get down there and help him,’ Savra said.

Did they really? Well, she was the seeress. She probably had a good reason to say as much.

‘Do you have any rope?’ Jhess asked.

Robin shot her a withering glance. What kind of question was that? What adventurer worth their salt didn’t carry a coil of quality rope with them?

He snapped his fingers and a coil of fine, strong silk rope appeared.

‘Showoff,’ Jhess muttered.

Robin passed her the rope. She was the best of them when it came to knots. Hopefully she wouldn’t use that against them.

Hopefully.

The rogue quickly knotted handholds in the rope before tying it to the base of a nearby stalagmite. She tugged experimentally at it a couple of times before nodding in satisfaction.

‘The bard goes first, then the healer. Drev will provide cover in case there are any nasty surprises down there. Check out Khavren’s condition, get him up and working if you can, then we’ll join you and we’ll see where this new tunnel leads.’

It was a reasonable enough plan, even if it did involve Robin putting himself squarely in the path of any potential danger. Though if there was anything down there, he half suspected it would already be gnawing on Khavren’s liver.

He grabbed the rope and shimmied down. It was a lot easier than he remembered it being. Of course that was back on Earth, in gym class. Before running for his life. Before classes. Before magic.

He’d changed quite a lot since then.

Robin hit the ground on the balls of his feet, tensed to sprint for cover if a threat appeared. The moment stretched out before him like a motorway, long and empty, but nothing dashed from the shadows to try and kill him.

‘I think its clear,’ he called up, not too loudly.

Better safe than sorry.

He moved over to Khavren. The knight was unconscious, but breathing. Savra was not far behind him.

‘He’s stable,’ she said after checking Khavren for signs of damage. ‘I think he probably just knocked his head. I don’t see any major damage. I should be able to wake him up with a cantrip. He’ll have a terrible headache, and it won’t heal any of the actual damage, but he should be functional enough to come with us to find a place to camp. You or I can heal him with magic after we rest. If he needs it.’

When Savra said the word ‘needs’, Robin heard ‘deserves’, and he didn’t disagree.

There was a pulse of curiosity along his empathic bond with Rerebos. Robin sent back a feeling of reassurance mixed with a dash of wariness. His familiar should stay back just a bit longer, but things seemed safe enough for the little dragon to approach a bit more closely.

Khavren sat up with a gasp, Savra’s hands on his temples. The seeress backed away quickly as the knight lashed out with his fists. Fortunately—or because of Savra’s gifts—he struck only air.

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‘It’s all right!’ Robin said in a low tone. ‘It’s all right. You fell and knocked the sense out of yourself, but we’re safe enough for now.’

The knight blinked at him.

‘Marq?’

‘That’s right,’ Robin said soothingly. ‘It’s your friend Marq, and Savra is here as well. She woke you up, so you should probably thank her. Dee and Jhess will be down in just a minute.’ He raised his voice slightly on that last sentence so it would carry up to the rest of the party and call them down.

Sure enough, Drev appeared down the rope a few moments later, followed quickly by Jhess. the rogue flicked the rope and the knot at the top came undone. Coils of tightly woven silk cascaded down out of the shadows into an untidy pile. Jhess picked it up and shoved it at Robin.

He mentally banished it to his storage space. He’d have to untangle it when they set up camp. As Savra took over answering Khavren’s confused questions, Robin shared a look with Jhess and the two of them fanned out to examine the new level of the undercity they found themselves on.

The hackles on the back of Robin’s neck stood to attention. Someone was watching them, he was sure of it; had been watching them since they descended to this level.

‘Do you feel that?’ he asked, returning to the party to consult with Savra.

‘Feel what?’

‘We’re being watched.’

‘Oh. That. Of course we are.’ The seeress shook her head. ‘We’ve come into the demesne of a living dungeon. They can sense pretty much anything that occurs within themselves. Though certain high-level illusions or specialised warding spells can counteract this, of course.’

Was it Robin’s imagination or did the ground tremble slightly in anger at Savra’s words?

Now that the seeress had mentioned it, however, he could see it. The little differences. The stone was a different colour here. Above, Robin had clearly been able to see and feel the grainy texture of the stone around him. Classic sedimentary rock. Here, though, the stone was smooth and dense. If it was once sedimentary, it had been compressed by a will as hard as stone or harder into something else.

‘The walls,’ Drev said quietly, ‘are usually a good giveaway. Stone altered by magic has clear tells that aren’t present in natural stone. This is harder than most stone has any right to be, and it shows.’ The mage ran his fingertips over the stone of the floor beneath him. ‘It’s very smooth. Too smooth to be completely natural. That’s because it’s been hardened by the will of the living dungeon. They usually do it so pesky adventurers like us can’t simply tunnel our way directly around or through obstacles.’ His voice was wry. ‘You’d be surprised just how many parties have a member or two who always opt to take the most direct route.’

‘If we’re in the dungeon, does that mean we need to retreat to find somewhere to rest?’ Robin wasn’t certain he’d be able to get even the mere hour of sleep he required with this sense of being watched. He seemed to have it much worse than the others. ‘Because we’ve already pulled down the rope behind us.’

‘No,’ Jhess said, returning, ‘there will be defensible locations throughout. It’s in the dungeon’s best interests to make thing fair. We just need to find a suitable place to rest and make sure we’re careful with our watches. It’s not much different than you’d expect travelling through countryside infested with wandering monsters.’

Robin wasn’t certain how reassuring he found that.

‘How long will it take to find a place? Our knight here isn’t exactly in any condition to execute an extended search.’ Robin jerked his head at Khavren.

Fortunately, the knight was still too dazed to pick up on the conversation around him, so the party was spared an extended exhortation on just how ‘fine’ and ‘capable’ the knight remained, in spite of his tumble.

Savra had said the knight would prove invaluable in helping them find their way to the treasure and she wasn’t wrong. They could have easily missed this entrance into the living dungeon beneath Noviel if Khavren hadn’t gone charging off after that shadowmantle.

It didn’t hurt that more than the knight’s pride was bruised in the process. Robin found he could live with knowing he rather enjoyed a bite of schadenfreude time and again.

‘I’ve already found a likely spot,’ Jhess said. She pointed back the way she had come. ‘Back that way. There’s a defensible niche. We’ll need to check it carefully for hidden doors or other veiled threats, but from what I could see, it should do.’

‘We should triple check,’ Robin said suddenly. With a clarity that sent icy shivers down his spine, he recognised just how tricky this dungeon could be. ‘This dungeon was smart enough to cover its entrances with a permanent illusion. I think we’re going to be facing all manner of clever tricks before the end.’

‘You mean we’re running through the dungeon equivalent of you?’ Jhess’s face soured. ‘Great. Because that’s exactly what we need.’

‘Hey!’ Robin protested.

‘It’s a compliment,’ Jhess assured him.

Robin didn’t believe her.

‘It’s probably both compliment and insult,’ Savra said with great equanimity. ‘Now help support Khavren and let’s get to the campsite Jhess found. We need to settle in and restore ourselves before we go delving any deeper. I suspect Robin is right and we will need all our powers and wits about us.’

‘You don’t know?’ Jhess asked snidely. ‘I should think you’d know.’

‘Not everything the future holds is so easily riddled out,’ Savra replied. ‘For example, not even I could foresee the truly tragic choices of shirt you packed in that bag of yours.’

Robin had to bite back a laugh as Jhess sputtered in indignation. Savra was growing on him. In spite of the unnerving effect she had on him.

More unnerving was the fact that he was almost certain the dungeon found her comment amusing as well.

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