Chapter 80: 5.4 – What Lies Beneath

The whispers thrummed through the stone floor beneath Robin, clattering up through his bones and disturbing his sleep. He didn’t need much, but he kept waking up, his slumber disrupted by the strange words.

No one else seemed to notice them. They all heard sounds, of course, but none heard words. To make things even worse, Robin couldn’t understand them. Not because they were strange or foreign—his [Tongue of the Fallen Tower] could handle that—but because they were too quiet.

The volume was pitched just high enough to disturb him and just low enough to be too indistinct to make out individual words.

But they were words. Robin was certain of that. He could catch the odd syllable, sometimes even a few all together, but without the context of surrounding speech, the word was there and gone before Robin could snag the meaning.

It was maddening. His imagination told him there was an amused undertone to the speech, but his bardic ear told him that it was merely that—his imagination. He forced himself to put it out of his mind and get some sleep.

He needed his rest to help restore his magical energies.

And his instincts told him he’d need every edge he could muster as they made their way deeper into the living dungeon. Especially if it was as clever and tricksy as they thought.

Fortunately, the night passed without incident. There were no surprise attacks, no unexpected traps triggered. The worst threat they all faced was Wulfram’s snoring, honestly.

They all faced the new day (assuming it was day—in the undercity, it was hard to tell) refreshed and restored. Khavren was back to his old self, so it was a mixed blessing, really. In fact, it was pretty remarkable how well everyone rested on the stone floor.

The bedrolls helped. They were high quality, thick and comfortable. Khavren and Drev both had extra-dimensional storage items so the weight wasn’t a problem, and the enhanced rest benefits were more than worth the space they took up.

Robin prowled the edges of their camp as the rest of the party prepared and ate breakfast. He didn’t need the food and he was too anxious to eat. The nerves stole all the flavour from the experience.

The campsite they occupied was more of a bulge in the tunnel. That meant two approaches to defend, but an escape route if an attack came from only one direction. It was the best Jhess could find on short notice, but it served.

Hopefully they could find someplace a bit more secure (and a bit more quiet) the next time they needed to rest. There was no way they had enough luck to find their way to the treasure today. Not unless Khavren fell through a wall right into the centre of the dungeon.

Though that could be a distinct possibility with the way things had been going for the knight.

Robin crept though the shadows down the tunnel to the next place it forked. He could hear the party but they were just out of sight. The tunnels down here curved in subtle ways that made it hard to track one’s progress.

The bard took the opportunity to call his familiar to him. He rubbed the little dragon’s brow ridges and had a whispered conversation about the things Rerebos had noticed about the dungeon so far. The conversation was more precious to Robin than the intel his familiar had gathered.

It was nice to talk to someone other than the rest of the party.

‘Marq! Jhess!’ Khavren called, ‘Form up! We’re about to head out.’

Robin trotted back to the campsite, mentally rolling his eyes at the knight’s tone. He noticed Jhess coming back from the opposite direction. She must have scouted the other way.

‘Options?’ Khavren asked when they were both standing near the party once more.

‘Tunnel. Dark. Not much to see, no hints of a landmark or a way through that I could sense.’ Robin gave his report as efficiently as he could.

‘Same on my end,’ Jhess said. ‘The whole place is much more featureless than the dungeons I’m used to, actually. The stone is much more uniform.’

‘Harder to find your way,’ Robin said. ‘Easier to hide things. It makes sense.’

‘Your brain is twisted, though,’ Jhess teased.

‘If it is, it’s the thing that is going to get us through this delve,’ Robin shot back. ‘That and Khavren’s unique leadership style.’ There was nothing like a sly comment that could easily be taken as a compliment. Robin had discovered an increasing fondness for that particular style of quip over the past few days of working with Khavren.

The knight preened at the words. Jhess shot Robin a glance, her eyes merry.

‘Of course,’ she said gravely. ‘Though I think you’re insulting the insight of our seeress with those words.’

‘I foresee an abrupt end to this conversation,’ Savra said, just as Khavren interrupted.

‘The dungeon won’t wait for us, and neither will any of the other teams seeking out this place! Let’s get moving before we lose our head start.’ Khavren glanced to either direction before striding off in the direction Jhess had returned from.

The party fell into formation behind him, Jhess ranging ahead to scout and dropping back periodically to update them. Drev and Savra were secure in the middle of the pack, and Wulfram and Robin formed the rear, keeping an eye out for potential ambush.

The trail forked and then forked again. And again. The tunnels lopped and curved and turned back on themselves. Khavren kept pushing them forward, striding forward confidently and overriding Jhess’s uneasy requests to pause and assess.

The knight was forced to call a rest, however, when they reached a junction where seven different tunnels met.

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‘This place is a labyrinth!’ Jhess complained. ‘I’ve been marking the way with chalk, but even with my wayfinding marks I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to find our way out of this.’

‘It’s a purposeful design,’ Savra said suddenly. ‘These tunnels were formed to be confusing. Formed to be a maze. This is the first line of defence.’

‘And that’s why we haven’t encountered any monsters so far,’ Robin said slowly. ‘We’re not close enough to the heart of things to make it worthwhile for the living dungeon to expend resources like that. The maze will weed out plenty of invading monsters and a good share of adventuring parties if it’s clever enough.’

‘This one is definitely clever enough,’ Jhess said sourly.

At least someone appreciates my design.

Robin froze. It was the voice that had disturbed his sleep all night! But where was it coming from? He tried to keep his face neutral. From the looks of it, none of the other members of his party had heard anything. There’s no way they wouldn’t have reacted if they had. Best not react for now. Maybe the voice would let some more details slip.

But the mysterious voice didn’t say anything further. Khavren and Jhess were arguing about the best way to proceed.

‘There’s no way we can map this while maintaining that pace,’ the rogue was saying.

‘We’ll lose too much time if we stop to make an extended map.’ The knight was adamant.

‘There is a saying where I am from,’ Robin cut in. ‘Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.’

‘Yes!’ Jhess said. ‘That!’

Khavren looked sceptical.

‘Think about how you perfect your swordplay,’ Robin said, trying to translate into terms the knight would accept. ‘When you begin training, you take care to slowly practise the move so you get it right, so your muscles learn the right path and inscribe it in their memory. That smoothness allows you to move very fast once you get up to speed. This can be like that. If we have a proper map, we’ll be able to move fast when we need to.’

They argued back and forth for a few more minutes but eventually Khavren gave in to Jhess. Not even the knight could deny that getting lost in this maze would not be an ideal state of affairs. Even with magical sustenance, wandering eternally in a maze was not the way anyone wanted to spend large portions of their life.

And Jhess made a very convincing argument for how a map would get them to the centre of the maze—and thus both monsters to fight and treasure to recover—faster.

‘There are patterns to these things,’ the rogue insisted. ‘Once I’ve mapped it, we’ll be able to see the trends, the ways the tunnels bend around one another, and we’ll be able to find our way to the centre much faster.’

Ha! Like it’s going to be that easy. I love it when they think it is.

Robin froze. There was the voice again. It was eerie how familiar it sounded. It was like it crept into his mind while he slept and took up residence in his memory.

‘This is going to shift our formation,’ Robin said. ‘We need someone to map, and someone to scout for traps and monsters as well. But that means Jhess and myself will both be occupied. Drev and Savra will be more exposed. We need to take that into account.’

They hashed out a plan and carefully retraced their steps so Robin could get a solid start on the map. Jhess had sharper eyes, and he had a better hand, so it made sense for him to play cartographer.

Once they were sure of their way out, they made their way quickly back to the junction of seven tunnels. Khavren looked pleased.

‘Slow is smooth and smooth is fast,’ the knight mused as they went.

Of the seven tunnels, they picked the one that seemed to be branching furthest away from the way out. It seemed likely that the deeper reaches of the dungeon would be in that direction, barring any ridiculous switchbacks or other tricks.

Robin was fully expecting there to be other tricks.

Said shenanigans were a long time manifesting, however. The party made good time over the next two hours, travelling deeper and deeper into the maze.

‘I should start looking for a good place to camp,’ Jhess said eventually. ‘We’ve been covering a lot of ground and I think it’s time for an evening meal and some sleep.’

‘Let’s press on another hour or two,’ Khavren boomed. ‘This is going well! We’ll be through this paltry maze in no time!’

‘Noooo,’ Robin groaned. ‘Don’t say that! Never say stuff like that!’

‘What? Why?’ The knight looked confused.

He didn’t stop, however, and strode on down the tunnel, ignoring Jhess’s frantic gestures to wait. There was an audible click beneath the knight’s foot and a wall of stone began to descend from the ceiling.

Of course.

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