Cabochon felt cold. It was a deep, gnawing lack of heat, one that made his fingers tremble in numb spasms as he lifted them skywards. The stone spinner spiders crawled across the vault of the ceiling weaving bridges of stone, forming a mesh that he turned as white as cloud, threading veins of silver into the latticework that spanned the false sky.

Between the mesh, in the diamond-shaped gaps, he built lamps of blue crystalline salt and everflame, creating the illusion of a blue sky.

Or- he tried to. He tried until he felt short of breath, and his head resonated with a distant ringing.

Chunks of everflame and crystal broke away, raining into the dense jungle below like falling stars.

Aeslin was ugly as sin, and he wasn’t much better on the inside. He was tall, brutishly muscular with stocky legs and long, ape-like arms, and he stank so bad the men chained next to him had tears in their eyes. Once upon a time he’d liked to make shoes out of skin. Human skin.

The only reason he was still alive was he’d threatened a death-curse on the executioner who ended him, and the threat had stuck, becoming legend as he was left to rot in his cell, rearing generations of pet rats and crafting strange idols from their bones.

They’d chained him at the back of the line, to keep the rest of them moving from fear. One by one he’d seen the other prisoners let free, handed a knife, and pushed into the jungle.

Soon it would be his turn. He was shivering with anticipation.

In the distance, a blazing shard of flame fell from the ceiling. They could see it ripple, changing before their eyes, spiders crawling the ceiling like perverse angels putting a false heaven in place. Aeslin drooled at the sight. He had a taste for spider-meat, a supplement to the dry bread of prison, and they were juicy morsels to him.

The guards hesitated, glancing at the last three prisoners. The rest had already been let go into the jungle.

The crash of the ‘falling star’ echoed, and was answered by hoots and howls from within the dense foliage. Something roared, something enormous.

“You know what?” The lead guard had screwed up his courage, and he glanced to his comrades. “Fuck all of this.”

He hurled the keys overhand, out into the strange flora of the bizarre jungle. “Go fetch.”

The other two hesitated. Aeslin grinned, and yanked them forward by their chains. They yelped, but he was already reeling them in like sweet little fishes, winding the chains around his arms to drag them closer, closer, into the ogre-stink of his breath.

“My fine lil’ pets. My companions dear and lubberly.” He cooed to them. “Oh we are going to have fun together.”

They sweated in sweet fear of him.

“The first thing we do,” he explained oh so softly, “Is find usselves someone with a knife, and we get the knife, forceful-like.”

There was a southern gate, and a northern one. That was the deal. Anyone coming from the south was a tribute, a sacrifice. Anyone from the north was a hunter and a contender.

Lined up at the gates as shining guards checked their tokens, they joined the strangest lot of people Tyrna had ever found herself lumped in with. Her own group passed almost unnoticed- there were merfolk dressed in hide jackets and dangling necklaces of shark’s teeth, an eight-foot goliath in full plate that made him seem like a titan of steel, a man with what looked like a winged serpent coiled around his arm.

A studious dwarf who peered at the world through a jeweller’s monocle was conversing with Mhurr as she tapped her foot, waiting for them to be sieved through the guard’s solitary checkpoint. Minutes ticked by and she felt like a girl waiting for the circus.

As if to complete the picture, Draig juggled an apple.

Finally they reached the gate - it was a thing of ominous grandeur, two serpents entwined around engraved pillars, reaching out to grasp the a carving of the sun between their jaws.

A step through, and the city was gone, confined to the archway of light behind them. Before them loomed a jungle of luminous plants, of many-colored glows ebbing and fading in steady rhythm as if the world had a pulse.

Tyrna carefully took one step forward, then another. Tiny lanterns of fungal material came to light as she touched them, and softly drifted into the air. They were spherical, with nets of soft spongy tissue around a glowing core, lifting towards the ceiling as her boots knocked them from the thin stems that anchored them to the ground. A feathered lizard clung to a nearby tree, a sail-like fin jutting from its back. It opened its mouth and croaked-

She ducked as a jet of poison sprayed from its open mouth. Before she had even hit the ground, Caoirre had stepped in from behind her and plunged his blade through lizard and the petrified tree it perched on. He drew the beast back, skewered, and offered the twitching specimen to Mhurr.

“Our first kill. Little smaller than expected, eh?” The scholar noted, scooping the lizard into a little wooden box lined with preservation runes and dumping it into his pack.

“The poison will be worth something.” Henri said, whistling to call up three little wisps. One by one he flicked them into the jungle. “But let’s find something bigger…”

Glowing, curl-topped grass brushed against the tops of their legs as they proceeded, following Henri’s directions.

“Dunlan? Dunlan!” Jens was lost. Don’t worry about him, his past, his dreams; all that mattered was the knife clutched in his hand and the prayer of survival.

He and his best mate Dunlan had a plan, and it was a pretty solid plan. Hide out till nightfall and try to cut their way out through the gate. Maybe scare some beasties that way to frighten off the guards first. It was the best plan Jens had ever come up-

And he was blowing it, because he was lost.

“Jens? Jens? Jens?” The call came from the distance. Huge ferns sprouted up around him, like the primordial forests of the before-days when Caltern hadn’t yet been settled like a great big blister of civilization on the land’s back. Fungal bodies the shape of great red cups loomed above him, the little veiny lines scalloping their underside glowing with a faint light.

He hurried towards the voice.

But it wasn’t Dunlan. Dunlan was dead already, lying mangled and twist-limbed over a rocky stream, the red wicking away on the flowing water in ribbons of blood.

“Jens?”

The voice came from above.

Jens felt the shadow fall over him. Jens turned his head up, to see the enormous black body of the crow descending, taloned feet stretched out to catch him like a scurrying mouse. Don’t worry about his past, his dreams; none of them saved him in the end.

Tyrna held her bow at the ready, Caoirre at the front with both blades drawn, his stance bent to spring into battle, fending off the beasts by sweeping the swords through the air between. There was a whole pack of them, eight or more - they were half-scaly and half-feathered, with deep black shadows around their eyes and orange plumes upon their heads. Teeth slavered, snapping at the air. Claw-fingers stretched from their stubby wings.

“Hold them, hold them…” Mhurr was babbling, his hands flashing through the air as he ripped fistfuls of spellwork into existence. A wheel was forming, a white flame dancing within, but it was far too slow.

The terrors were spreading out, trying to surround them. The moment the encirclement was done they would pounce. Tyrna’s bowstring strained with held tension. They didn’t have a moment longer for Mhurr to work.

Behind them, Draig reached for his book. White mist surrounded his hand and he flung his fingers forward, sending a pale phantom of a rabbit dashing into the middle of the feathered flock. Their alpha lunged for it, slamming his enormous, clawed feet through the ghostly hare.

And in the moment the alpha moved, so did Caoirre. “Now!” His sword came up as the beast leaped down, and the edge sawed across the terror’s scaly throat in a flash of blood that became a long arterial spray. In the same movement he flicked his short blade into the wing of the nearest packmate, setting it stumbling so it couldn’t intercept him.

Tyrna let go, and the arrow found the injured beast through the eye, finishing the job.

The third in line leapt for Caoirre, wings beating to keep it steady in the air as its clawed toe-tips reached for him. With both hands on the hilt of his longsword he blocked the leaping kick, grunting, his backleg sliding through the dirt. A surge of effort was enough to throw the beast back, but now a fourth was lunging forward and Tyrna’s hand was still lifting the next arrow to the mark-

Mhurr let go of his spell. The surge of flame seared her eyes blind for a flash of a second, turning the foremost raptor into a struggling, screaming shadow within the blaze. It faded as quick as it came, but that moment of relief had cleared a space between them and the flock.

Tyrna’s bow sung again, meeting a terror between the eyes. Dead.

Caoirre lunged forward at the one that had leapt for him, catching the beast with a heavy, overhand swing as it was still scrambling back onto its feet. Blood spilled from a hewn skull.

The remaining three scattered, letting out barking, hooting cries of panic.

Slowly, her breathing slowed to normal, the thunder of her heart letting loose. In the moment she was always calm, but in the after she was only human; panic and shaky excitement and the exhaustion of draining adrenaline all came over her in a wash.

Tyrna knelt by the corpse, examining the bright orange feathers. “Good for arrow-making.”

“Oh, and the meat would be worth a pretty penny for the magic inside, but alas. We’ll have to be quicker next time.” Draig sighed.

“What do you mean?”

“Watch.” The old man said.

And she did. The corpses were coming apart. A light burned them at the edges, dissolving them into motes of flame that drifted into the air and vanished. Not all blinked out. A few spiralled towards her, settling into her skin.

Only the feather in her hand remained.

“Always the way with Dungeons.” Draig opined.

“Ha. Look!” Mhurr held out his hands, showing the way they clustered to him. His ‘draw’ was the strongest of any of them, probably thanks to his magecraft, the little bright sparks swarming through him in a meteor-shower of gold.

But Tyrna was more concerned than elated. “Mhurr, is that little lizard we caught still there?”

“Oh, oh yes, let me see…” Digging through his bag, he opened up the box. “Yes!”

“Good. Then we can keep what we kill, as long as we take quickly. We’ll hunt a little more and then call a retreat for the day.” She had hunted for years. Greed wouldn’t make her forget the hard lessons now. Kill too much, and the blood would call to predators.