It always came down to dungeons.

This was just a fact of life for anyone who chose “adventuring” as a primary occupation. Sooner or later you ended up in a very dark place underground with assorted monsters and traps and if you were lucky, treasure. If you were very, very lucky you got to survive those places, return with some of the treasure, and live fairly well until you eventually had to repeat the process.

The place they were currently clambering down into wasn't, strictly speaking, a capital “D” dungeon. It didn't have core chambers, there were no respawning wandering monsters or endlessly generated treasures, and the only boss creature in there was the one who had doubtlessly devoured all its competition years ago.

“Treasure is mmmm... likely, and best avoided,” Dracosnack said, consulting his notes. “Mimics tend to find metals and crystals indigestible, and as such use them to hmmm, lure prey into places where they can be best consumed.”

“Kind like angler fish in the down deep,” Glub said, eyes wide and glowing in the darkness of the old, dusty secret room. “Pity. I'm pretty sure this sucker's got some good gear from all the guys it nommed over the years.”

“Well, we might end up killing it,” Apollyon said, eyes wide in the flickering light of his flaming sword. “Plenty of time to loot after that.”

“Pretty sure that's not gonna happen,” Buttons said, from her perch on his shoulder. “This critter's had a lot of time to get chonky.”

“In any case, rescuing our people comes first, wherever they are,” Fluffbear reminded them. “Do you see any peepholes?”

“No,” Threadbare said, studying his tracks in the dust. He'd made a full circle of this chamber, and aside from two archways leading into darkness, there was nothing else in this room that he could see. Just cracked, worked stone and exposed dirt. And that was a little worrisome, because he was pretty sure the walls wouldn't hold if the mimic sent tendrils this way. “We're going to have to be very sneaky,” he cautioned the others. “If it catches us down here there's no way to flee without taking casualties. We'll have to fight if stealth fails.”

“When stealth fails,” Buttons predicted.

“Threadbare,” Fluffbear said, having come to a decision, “do you have any more materials for cloth mice?”

“No. I'm out.”

“What do you need for them?”

“Well, I have some thread left, but no cloth.”

Apollyon shook his head. “That's all you need?” He sheathed his sword, transferred Buttons over to Mopsy, and shucked out out of his tabard.

“What's going on? I can't see?” Buttons asked.

“Apollyon's getting naked,” Glub helpfully supplied.

“Not all the way!” the human protested, and with his darkvision, Threadbare could see the young man blush.

“And I'm missing it? Dammit! I wanted another show!” Buttons howled.

“I'm not stripping much,” Apollyon grumbled, and relit the sword, handing his tabard over to Threadbare. “Here. They'll be green mice with some gold, but I don't expect that's going to matter much.”

It didn't, and one Animus and two Dollseye skillups later, Threadbare had two minions scurrying ahead and scouting out the corridors. The Dollseye skill let him see through the mice, and he switched between them as he advanced them through the halls.

The secret passages showed a lot of wear and tear. The slow crumbling of the keep above, and the weighty shifting of the massive mimic had definitely done a number on the stone walls. Fortunately, that mesh of metal rods continued down into the lower levels, reinforcing the walls and giving support to the structure.

And in the eastern one, Threadbare's mouse found something disturbing.

The wall had been breached at one point, and tendrils of dirty flesh poked through the breach, and fed into the ceiling like reversed roots. They poked through cracks in the stone, and as he watched they twitched and contracted. Stone cracked, just a bit, and dust trickled down. As he watched, the tendrils tensed up and flowed into the wall like rope being pulled through a hole.

“It's active,” he said to the others, and they stiffened and fell silent.

They stood there in the dark, with only one of them holding their breath, as the sounds of stone and earth moving filled the halls.

Then, silence.

“It's not moving closer to us,” Threadbare said, commanding the mice to go forward again. One slid right under the tendrils, and he half-expected to lose it, but the fleshy feelers didn't drop, and the mouse was able to continue on.

The corridor curved around and down, and through an empty archway Threadbare stared at a mass of twisted metal, set into an empty round room. A thought struck him, and he looked over to Glub. “Let me see the map, please.”

A quick check, some mental geometry, and he nodded. “I've found one of the towers.”

“That's good! Is there any way to get out through there?”

Threadbare took a second to search with his mouse. “It looks like there was one once, but it's blocked by rubble now. We could risk clearing it, but the courtyard's right there next to where we'd come out.”

“And our hungry buddy was all over the courtyard,” Buttons finished.

“Was. It's moving now, but I don't know why. It could have shifted.” Threadbare thought. “Let me finish mapping out the secret passages. With your help please, Glub.”

He found that each of the other three towers was reachable through the passages. And that there was only one place where the mimic had broken through, that patch with the tendrils in the ceiling.

More importantly, he found a peephole. Right next to what looked to be a still-intact secret door.

By then the mimic was shifting again, and dust was pattering down from the ceiling. Whatever it was doing, it was putting a lot of effort into things.

“Maybe it's going after that dragon that Anne shot down,” Apollyon offered, and that was an interesting thought.

“If that's the case then it'll be distracted,” Threadbare said, as he led the way down the westernmost passage, past the southwestern tower, and over to the unused door. Getting a boost from Glub he peered through the peephole.

Once it had been a wine cellar, he thought. Or a storehouse for supplies. It was a vast open room supported by countless pillars that stretched floor to ceiling. Glowing runes broke up the darkness in patches along the floor... and they were the only patches of floor he could see, because every other surface was covered in what looked like brown taffy. Piles and lumps of it were spewed unevenly over the floor, over the pillars, over parts of the walls.

There was a main staircase in the southern portion of the room. He could just see it, winding up to the floor above. He could also see the spiky tendrils hanging around it, at just the right angles to snatch at anything that dared to take the stairs.

Rising up out of the taffy here and there were wooden tables and benches and bits of furniture, and in the multi-colored light of the runes he could see piles and heaps of metal items and jewelry and coins and weapons and armor.

And he could see something else, in the center of things.

“Good news and bad,” he said softly, pulling back from the peephole. “There's a flight of stairs heading down in the middle of the room, and they look completely clear of the mimic. If there's anyone alive in here, I'm pretty sure they'll be down there.”

“What's the bad news?” asked Glub.

“The mimic is piled up all around the room. If we wanted to stick to the clear spots we would have to hop through magic runes to get to it, and I have no idea what they do. But I'm pretty sure they do something bad, if the mimic isn't on them.”

The tunnels shuddered again, and stone crumbled somewhere in the distance.

“We can't stay here and do nothing,” Fluffbear squeaked.

Threadbare put his eyes back to the peephole. “It looks like parts of it have receded a bit. It's putting more mass into its tendrils, I think.”

“Let me see,” Buttons said. “I can Case the Joint,”

He made room, and she scanned it. “Okay. So I'm thinking I can carry a mouse and toss it down the stairs to do some scouting. Good news is the mimic low enough on the walls I can probably use my Burglar skills to crawl over them, but the problem is that staircase is in the center of the room. Even if I go to the closet edge, that's still way too far for my arm. So I'll have to hop on at least one of the runes. Probably that red sparky one, or the yellow one that looks kinda like a fish. Which one do I go for?”

Threadbare rubbed his chin. Then he gently nudged her aside, stared through the hole, and whispered “Appraise.”

Your Appraise skill is now level 37!

Your Appraise skill is now level 38!

PER+1

“The sparky red one is a fire trap,” Threadbare said, studying each rune carefully. “The yellow one just repels tiny things. I think it's a preservation spell.”

“Yeah? Wonder why the mimic left that one alone?” Buttons asked.

“I know the answer to that one,” Apollyon said. “I think, anyway. My family deals in a lot of food and you need preservation spells for the shipments. You're not supposed to spend a lot of time in their area of effect, or you get the depleted intestinal flora condition. Which means that you stop getting nourishment from whatever you eat. It's nasty, but a Cleric can take care of it and it kills you slowly, so you usually have enough time to get to one and get it fixed.”

“Mimics are, hmm... supposed to be all stomach,” Dracosnack whispered. “It would make sense that it wouldn't find such a state, mmm, desirable.”

Fluffbear looked to Buttons. “This is a big risk. Are you sure you want to do it?”

“I'm the safest one in here to try,” Buttons said. “It doesn't eat metal, and I'm metal. I don't have any intestines, so that floral thing won't bother me. And if it grabs me I'll just play dead and it'll put me on a pedestal.”

“If it doesn't squish you first,” Fluffbear said.

“Yeah, there's that.” Buttons clicked her teeth together, with a tiny 'ping.' “But I'm your burgl... ah, I'm your quartermaster. This is why Garon chose me, yeah?”

Fluffbear nodded. Then the little black-furred paladin stretched up and booped Buttons on the nose. “Bless your agility one hundred,” she squeaked.

“Woo, yeah!” Buttons grinned. She picked up one of the cloth mice and tucked it under her arm. Then she unlimbered her gun and handed it to Apollyon. “Keep this safe, sexy. Don't shoot anything off until I get back, huh?”

He choked and turned red, but gingerly tucked the pistol into his pouches... tried to, anyway. Frowning he hauled out a small box. “What's this?”

“Oh!” Threadbare said, taking it from him. “That's the box of reagents that Garon sent along. For me to enchant my own items. I had almost forgotten about that.”

“There's a chance Buttons could set the mimic off,” Fluffbear said, glancing to the peephole that the tin soldier was already wiggling her way through. “Do you want to enchant something useful now?”

“No,” Threadbare shook his head. “I need to save my sanity to heal her if things go wrong. Enchanting takes a lot of energy.”

“Then watch her, and stand ready,”

As they spoke, Dracosnack twitched. “Wait! I could just use my magic fingers to—”

He spoke too late, as Buttons vanished through the hole, and the sounds of tin clinking against stone echoed through the room on the other side.

Threadbare pushed his face up against the peephole... and gasped, as he saw the entirety of the pudding-like flesh around the room shift and quiver. He started to call a warning, caught himself, and used Wind's Whisper instead.

“I think it hears you! Be very quiet,” he cautioned Buttons and the clinking noise stopped.

But the mimic didn't stop moving. Toward the center of the room, just to the north of the stairs down, a pile of it seethed and bubbled, pulling substance from the surrounding heap. And as he watched, a slit appeared on it, stretching horizontally, stretching and opening...

...and a vast eye stared out into the room, twitching around, four pupils chasing each other around the orb until they coalesced into a cornea, and scanned its domain.

Scanned, and stopped, focusing on the peephole, staring at it with laser focus as Threadbare stared back.