After “defeating” the little moth girl and winning back her armor, as well as an ugly, blasphemous statue Hilda wanted to get rid of as soon as possible, the tired and beaten dwarf considered taking a short rest. While it wouldn’t restore her spells or abilities, it would heal some of her damage and give the pantry warlock enough time to fuck off and let her loot in peace.

However, the thought of some asshole getting a lucky shot at the lower levels and beating her to her prize when she was this close was like nails in her butt. After pacing the room, which got increasingly more foul-smelling as the dead lizard thawed, Hilda decided to go for the final push. If that didn’t work, well, then she’d take a long rest, hopefully with Medvak to keep an eye on her, and then go for another final push. So it wasn’t really a final push, more like a preflight push, which was the least dwarfish thing imaginable. Dwarfs didn’t look for shortcuts to happiness. Dwarfs worked long and hard and were happy to return home each day with nothing to show for it but a sense of having done the right thing.

That’s why Hilda was so utterly sick of them.

Besides, it was the third floor. Nothing here could just straight out kill her. She was clad in fine dwarven steel and despite her short and stubby legs, she was a decent runner. Worst case scenario: she’d just run away. There was no shame in running away if no one saw you running away. Right?

Hilda felt confident as she sheepishly peered outside, sniffed the air for crazy warlocks, lovelorn ghouls, barbarian engineers, or anything else that could harm or benefit her. After not sensing anything unusual, she tiptoed for the waterproof door across the corridor. For a second, Hilda felt concern for her compa-- um, followers, but there was nothing she could do about it at the moment. Eyes on the prize, hero girl. You’ve got it!

Kicking the door didn’t seem like a wise idea. If the room really was full of water, it’d flood her and allow whatever was inside to chomp her. For some reason Hilda kept thinking about sharks. Huge sharks with metal teeth. She imagined herself opening the door, being wholly submerged in brine and then mauled by a shark. Maybe one that shot death rays from its eyes. She’d rather it happened to someone else.

Facing the door, Hilda leaned on her shield and massaged her chin thoughtfully. The room smelled sort of acidic, like that stuff her Hundred used to unclog latrines and washbasins. So probably not a shark. Maybe a massive jellyfish?

Hilda saw a dead jellyfish on the beach once. It didn’t look tough. It looked--

Ah-hah! Hilda knew what to do. She had a very sharp sword and sharp swords were good for more things than just making holes in monsters and heretics.

Protected by her shield from nose to knee, Hilda pulled back her sword and stabbed the door with all her strength. The magically-treated metal sliced through the thick wood like it was cardboard. Hilda lost her footing and would have smashed her face against the door if not for the shield in front of her. She didn’t expect her sword to be that sharp.

She quickly pulled it out, cringing as the wood creaked loudly and jumped back. No brine or acid poured through the slit but the acidic odor intensified. Hilda considered trying to peer through the hole, but that’s how people got stabbed in the brain. She’d rather it happened to someone else.

Accepting that if she had any element of surprise before, it was now irrevocably lost, Hilda commenced hacking at the door until it had a hole large enough to allow her to observe the room without pressing her face to the door. Hacking through the sturdy oaky was noisy, loud, and hard, and certainly made her feel like a real dwarf.

Finally, she had a hole large enough to throw a halfling through, which she would have done had she had a halfling. Hilda crouched to peer inside.

A shapeless blob reminiscent of an angry lime jelly filled about half the room. Bones and arrowheads floated inside. Behind them, there was a very appetizing emerald the size of an apple. A very, very small apple, but still.

Bingo.

All Hilda had to do was pull out the gem and she’d win the dungeon. She felt lightheaded from how close the culmination of her dreams was. However, she had no idea what the thing was capable of, so she felt equally lightheaded with apprehension.

If only she had some kind of a very long, acid-resistant stick with a pincer at the tip, or an ability to move objects with her mind… the latter was common enough among humans in the desert, at least according to Gloin. The brutal sun mutated them, making them ugly and twisted but also granting them strange, magical powers. Oh, why did Medvak have to be a healthy, woodland beefcake and not some twisted cripple from the wastes that could move things with his mind? Hilda sighed. She didn’t even have a rope, let alone a long, acid-resistant pincer or a telekinetic mutant follower.

The hideous frog monsters that sacrificed dwarfs to their abominable deity had such pincers. Maybe she could rent one? There were probably some in the tunnels beyond the troll cave… No, of all the bad ideas Hilda ever had, this one was probably in the top ten. Um. Twenty. Hilda had a lot of bad ideas lately.

Hmmm… I wonder what would happen if I castigate that creature… if it even is a creature…

Hilda stuck her sword into the floor, again impressed by how easily it slid into the hard stone, and produced her holy symbol. Focusing her attention on the creature and on her love for the Goddess, Hilda cast castigate.

At first, nothing had happened. Then, a pseudopod shot from the quivering mass and sped in the dwarf’s direction. Hilda raised her shield to fend off the attack. This turned out to be a very bad idea as the pseudopod totally ignored the well-protected dwarf and grabbed her sword instead. Before she had time to blink, her best weapon was floating inside the green miasma, surrounded by soft bones and rusted arrows.

Hilda’s roar of frustration was so loud it was probably heard on the moon. Not only she’d just lost her most formidable weapon, she was down 2,000 gp! Well done Hilda, you really managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory!

Shaking with fury and blinking away tears, Hilda unhooked her hammer and charged into the room. She didn’t have a concrete plan, she was just mad with rage. More pseudopods slithered in her direction, but she either swatted them away with her shield or smashed them into gooey stains with her battlehammer. Her sword floated less than a meter deep in the vile ooze, if she could just hook it with her hammer--

A fast moving pseudopod bypassed Hilda’s shield and slapped her like the trunk of a jilted elephant. Her helmet protected her from the acid, but the force of the blow was enough to inflict 9 points of damage and leave her head rattling. In the split second it took her to get back to her senses, the thing had snatched her hammer and swallowed it with the sound of a mire sucking in your best shoe. Hilda wailed in despair and tried to grab the hammer. The result was the green jelly somehow ripping her gauntlet right off her hand and sucking it as well.

Mad with rage, Hilda tore off her helmet and hurled it at the center of the green mass with a meteoric smite which she powered through inspire allies, so it was kinda lame. It exploded, showering the dwarf with bits of green ichor that burned like drops of lava raining on her exposed face and hand. While agonizing, the superficial burns cost her only 3 hit points.

The explosion reduced a good chunk of the creature into liquid goo and its invasive pseudopods into stripes of inanimate green drek. Careful not to step into the pooling acid, Hilda started advancing toward her sword, which was now sticking out of the creature, its handle turned toward the dwarf like a peace offering. Fat chance of that. Hilda wasn’t planning to leave the room without the shiny gem that still floated inside the amorphous monster.

Instead of reaching for the sword with her hand, Hilda decided to scoop it with her shield. From all the blows it'd taken in the last few hours, the poor thing looked more like a chewed hill giant spoon than a stately dwarf item.

However, maybe this was for the best: for in the end of the day, you didn’t eat jelly with a fork and a knife: you ate it with a spoon. Hilda carefully pushed her shield into the now immobile mass. It had the texture of a dead jellyfish but seemed to quiver on its own, like it was either shivering in terror or laughing mockingly.

Suddenly, the yielding substance thickened and her shield was sucked from her hands and into the gelatinous mass. A cascade of new pseudopods shot forth and grabbed the dwarf by her forearm and torso. Roaring with effort, her heart now pounding with panic instead of excitement, Hilda started struggling toward the door, shielding her face as well as she could without her shield, helmet or gauntlet. Luckily, there were only two pseudopods long enough to hold her and they were both wrapped around her mostly intact breastplate.

Less luckily, the thing was stronger than her. Despite all her rage, she was losing ground and getting closer and closer to its palpitating core. Two more meters and Hilda would start the process of being digested alive by a freak unnamed by science. She’d rather it happened to someone else.

Cursing everyone and everything, but mostly herself, Hilda unfastened her breastplate. Like an arrow released from a bow, the dwarf shot through the door and smashed face first into the wall. The force of the blow had caused her backpack to rapture and her silver cup to fall to the ground. Hilda jumped after the cup, but it rolled out of her reach and into the ooze, which had snatched it gladly. Furthemore, since her torso was no longer protected, the acid she slid on easily burned through her tunic and inflicted 9 more points of damage, spreading fiery pain all throughout her flank and elbow.

Panting, Hilda leaned against the opposing wall and stared balefully into the ooze that was munching on her dreams without even knowing it. She was unarmed, unarmored, had slightly over half her hit points, and had no spells or ability activations left.

Hilda took a deep breath, shut out the pain, and assessed her situation.

The much reduced ooze was slowly oozing into the corridor through the shattered door. Inside the larcenous lump floated at least 4,500 gp worth of treasure, including her three most prized possessions and most of her sense of self-respect.

Her assessment: the situation sucked.