“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

— Sarah Williams, Twilight Hours: A Legacy Of Verse

==Tarrae==

A path, gently lit by lights embedded into columns of crystal, greeted us as we entered the cavern.

“It’s beautiful,” said Norana.

“It is,” I said. “Any signs of anything, Soara?”

“Nothing so far, footing is completely solid up to the edge of my range. Still a safe zone. Named the ‘Starlight Grotto.”

Reassured, we paused just outside the entrance. We each appreciated the beauty of the gigantic dungeon room in our own way.

For my own sake, I breathed in the starlight that shone from overhead. I could feel the various colors as they mingled together. It wasn’t quite perfect. Besides the absent Yamash, there were areas of light that felt less complete than the true stars. I doubted anyone who wasn’t a light mage would notice.

Still, I admired the subtle ways the lights in each column blended together to create a cohesive whole before fading into the starry gloom. It was a significant display of artistry. I had no doubt my own former instructors would love to study how the effects were created.

The light-show captured my attention for a time, but eventually my own trained responses cataloged the various statues, the road, and the building which glowed with a more mundane light.

It was a large two-story building, the top floor smaller than the bottom, which waited for us beside the road. Warm light spilled out into the eternal night.

“Well, guess we should go check out the rather obvious building ahead,” I said.

A few nods and murmured agreements followed as we started to get moving again.

It took us only moments to arrive at the wooden door of the building. A piece of paper was pinned to it. I took it off and read it:

Welcome fellow explorers,

Night arrived before you did, so we went to grab some sleep. A building matching this one is on the opposite side of the cavern. One of us will be on watch if you have need of emergency help. All of us, including our healer, are in good shape.

We have checked out our own building, and this one, in our exploration of the cavern, and both have proven to be safe. We will be stopping by when we have finished taking our rest. We assume you will likely need rest yourselves after a long day of walking.

This dungeon has a number of peculiarities which we will be happy to share with you.

It isn’t very often that we get to explore with another team.

Hope to talk to you soon,

Zidaun, Inda, Firi, and Gurek

“Well… that is rather nice of them.” I said.

“Is there a protocol in place for this?” Anaath said.

“No,” I said, “like the note says, we don’t explore with other teams often. At least not doing an initial exploration. And they are from another country entirely. Not like dungeons pop up on the borders everyday.”

“It is rather exciting, isn’t it?” Soara said.

“Yep,” I sighed, “but we do have protocol for searching buildings. It was nice of them to tell us they checked it out, but we need to verify that it is safe too. After that, we can sleep.”

“Remind me again,” Norana said,” why I wanted to go explore new dungeons?”

“Damned if I know,” Anaath muttered.

We proceeded into the building carefully. Soara insured the building’s general integrity, Anaath checked for poisons, I checked for magic, and Norana kept guard. Eventually we verified that the building was both safe and could not be looted.

I was especially sad about not being able to loot the building. The cloth in the rooms was stunning. The weave and color were both exceptional. It was worth so much. If the dungeon gave out this kind of cloth… it would change the balance of trade. The best silks came from across the ocean.

Regardless, we each prepared to get some sleep. The beds were going to be a sinfully wonderful luxury after camping in tents for days on end.

As leader, I took first watch. It wasn’t the worst watch, usually, but with all of us already tired I took on the extra responsibility.

The night was quiet. There was no wind in this cave, just the soft sound of my teammates’ snoring. When my watch ended I fell into bed and slept without dreams.

==Zidaun==

After the new dungeon entrance connected, we went to take a look at the opened tunnel. Once it finally opened anyway, we had to wait for some time before it actually did. It proved to be almost identical to the one we had entered through.

There were a few small differences. The slope of the tunnel was gentler than the tunnel that we had entered through. The tunnel was also decorated with a zigzagging pattern in blues and greens. The bathrooms were the same. We stared into the tunnel, it faded into a single point some indeterminate distance away. With nothing else to see, we decided to take more tests. With the amount of distance the tunnel needed to cross to get to the other side of the Lances, the other team was at least hours away.

The next test proved easy enough for me, but the others took a very long time. It was a test of traps. I could see through the stone, though. When I reached the end of the test Caden was waiting for me. I taught him words as best as I could. Some things were nonsensical though, and I couldn’t provide an answer. What did a circle with parts of it turning dark and light again even mean?

Other things were easy enough to tell. Trees of various types appeared in front of me made of stone. Other types of plants, insects, plate mice and rats, were also shown. Gems, cloth, gold, and all the other various items that had been displayed in the sacrificial room were shown to be named.

I was able to name Shurum and Otga for him after he created a painting of them on the wall. Did the gods have other names in other languages? Or maybe the names changed with time...

Then we started to get into the values of the types of coins.

It was a somewhat surreal experience to have mountains of coins of various types appear before me so I could demonstrate counting out the various types. Eventually I believe that Caden understood all the various values, however. He seemed surprised that the dungeon gold was worth so much more than regular gold.

Maybe that used to be different, many thousands of years ago? I couldn’t imagine why, it was absolutely invaluable for various professions. We were in the middle of further naming when Caden rose and dismissed me.

I soon found out why. A few minutes after I left, Gurek came striding out.

The tests this time hadn’t been so physically demanding, but the stress of trying to avoid the traps was enough to make Gurek complain. I was fairly sure he would have found something to complain about regardless, however. It wasn’t too much longer before the others joined us.

After waiting hours for the new tunnel to open up, and taking the test, it was almost night. Only one test entrance remained. After we did that tomorrow, we should be able to enter the dungeon.

==Caden==

It had been amusing watching this new team of people enter. The bolt of concentrated light and heat that had struck my statue was also very informative. I wasn’t really sure how it compared to a standard physical attack, but the heat had managed to crack the stone on the statue. I assumed that meant it was reasonably powerful.

There was also some kind of weird magic coming from one of them. It would echo out and then return, over and over with each footstep they took. I wasn’t entirely sure, but I figured it was some form of extrasensory perception.

And the composition of the party was interesting.

It was another two men, a woman, and another Adar. This Adar was rather different. Rougher and thorny. He also couldn’t see me. I waited for them in the tunnel in all my naked glory. Despite my best efforts, I still hadn’t figured out a way to have clothes for my avatar.

Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

The similar party composition made me wonder if there was some kind of standardization for this kind of thing. It could be coincidence, but it seemed unlikely.

A shard continued to watch them the entire time they proceeded through the tunnel. As expected, it was quite boring, but I watched just in case.

Watching Zidaun and the others proved to be more interesting. Zidaun breezed past the various traps, but since I watched him using my own senses, that was hardly surprising. The others struggled quite a bit more. The one named Gurek was actually pretty good at spotting traps, but even he started falling into them about halfway through the long tunnel.

In the mean time I took the time to communicate with Zidaun. For the moment I simply wanted to widen my vocabulary.

There were any number of things that I needed to know, but I didn’t even have the basics of how to ask a question. Well, not unless you counted me pointing at various objects I sculpted or made.

Zidaun hadn’t been able to provide me with the word for moon. Of course, I was on an alien world. There was no guarantee that there was a moon. Or if they had one or more moons they might be tiny things like the moons of Mars. Earth having such a large natural satellite was rather abnormal, after all.

Zidaun was able to tell me what the name of the sun and the other red ring next to it in the sky were though, Shurum and Otga.

At least I had some words to describe trees as well as other flora and fauna.

I was able to get Zidaun to show me the value of various coins with some effort. It took quite a bit of hand waving to make him understand that I wanted to know how much silver was worth relative to gold, and then to learn the other values. I was surprised to learn that the gold which had mana infused into it was worth more. And not just a little. It was worth ten times a normal piece of gold. The exchange values after that were not terribly surprising. Gold was more valuable than silver, then copper, and finally iron. There might be other types of coinage too, but none had been sacrificed to me yet.

I was forced to send him on his way as Gurek was finishing up. I wasn’t actually sure if Zidaun had told the others about me. I also had no way to ask.

They went off to sleep and I resumed my normal activities. Various creatures evolved and fought against one another. I shaped caverns and populated them with ruins; monsters were placed to breed and take over their new environments.

Soon the dungeon would be opening for the first time, and I was excited to see it. I doubted anything I had now would be a real challenge, but I would have stronger monsters soon enough.

The new party of adventurers came up and read the note that had been pasted on their door then went to sleep shortly after. I had already copied the contents of the note so I could ask about the words later. Unfortunately, I suspected that many of them would be difficult to explain.

Night was well underway when I cleared away the snow from my aura above. My avatar went to take a look at the night. Maybe I would be able to see if there were any moons.

No moons caught my attention, instead something else did. To the south the sky was completely filled. A vast galaxy with four arms spun in the sky in shades of red and blue. The light was at least as bright as a full moonlit night back home.

I still wasn’t sure if this world had a moon, but I wasn’t sure that they needed one.