Each God and Goddess has told their followers a story of what happened to Ix. Some of them have told more than one. Each story is coloured by the personality and designs of the one who told it. Comparing as many stories as we have access to, one can hope to tease out the bare bones of a story we can hope is true.

It should be noted, however, that trying to outwit the Gods is a fool’s pastime. They are more capable than mere mortals - more capable than mortals can even understand. So if we have the truth, it is only because at least one God wanted us to have it.

The story then, is this. Ix tired of the endless stalemate. She wanted a world that would grow, and she convinced, or tricked, the other Gods to help her. We can assume that it takes the power of at least one God to end another. According to the story, it took three. Three Gods joined their power to one end, to shatter Ix into seven pieces.

- Heresies of Kaval

Both groups eyed each other warily. “Uh… this isn’t an ambush or anything,” I said carefully. “We were just heading to the dungeon. If you want, we can just skirt around you guys and leave you to do your harvesting.”

There was a brief pause, and then the human woman sheathed her sword and stepped forward. The others followed her example.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “You can’t be too careful out here.” She looked us over. “Is that all of you? Three’s a small party for the dungeon.”

“We have a scout,” I replied. “He’s scouting.” Her eyes narrowed at that. I shrugged, “Like you said, you can’t be too careful.”

“Hrmn,” she said, but she didn’t disagree. “I haven’t seen you around?”

“We’re new,” I said. “Just got in two days ago. This is our first trip.”

“I see.” She considered for a moment more, then stepped forward and put out her hand. “I’m Cerise. The others are Oadi, Ildas and Ralin.” She indicated who was who as I stepped forward to join her. Oadi was the red-furred Fox-kin, Ildas was the armoured dwarf and Ralin was the halfling.

“I’m Kandis,” I said and introduced the others. “We registered as the Black Swan company.”

“Our party name is Outlanders, on account of us all being from elsewhere,” she said.

“Is there a story there?” I asked, curious.

“Not much of one. It can be difficult here, joining a party if you’re not Latorran.”

“Ah, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Anyway, do you want us to get out of your hair while you take care of the corpses?”

She looked at me for a second, considering. “Nah, we’ll go with you to the dungeon - there’s room for more than one party. And this won’t take long.” She gestured to Ralin, who pointed at one of the corpses.

“[Nature’s Harvest],” she chanted, pointing at one of the wolves. It started twitching, and then contorting grotesquely. It looked like it was turning itself inside out and I had to look away for a second. When I looked again, the corpse had been replaced with a neatly folded skin, with cuts of meat tied up on top of it. All the bones, guts and blood had disappeared.

“Druid magic,” Cerise explained, as Ralin moved on to the other bodies. “It’s convenient. All the other stuff goes into the soil.” The other two adventurers started packing away the neatly packaged meat and furs.

“Right…” I said, my voice trailing off at the sight of another corpse brutalising itself. “How did you want to arrange things for us travelling together? Coordinating scouts and such.”

She shrugged. “There shouldn’t be a need for scouting ahead,” she said. “This pack should have scared all the other monsters off. Not that they’d attack such a large group.”

Now it was my turn to consider. None of my social skills were warning me about anything, so I decided a show of trust was in order.

“Cloridan, you can come out now,” I called, making a point of not looking in his direction. I gave him a few seconds to figure out what was going on before cancelling the spell. No need to give away all our secrets.

The group all jumped at Cloridan’s sudden appearance. I was pleased to note that Kyle and Felicity took it in stride.

“That’s quite an impressive [Stealth] you’ve got there,” Cerise said.

“I’m impressive in many ways,” Cloridan boasted, giving her a wink. Apparently, he was far enough away from Felicity to return to his normal manner. Cerise snorted.

“Adventurers - always think they’re such hot shit,” she said. She didn’t seem bothered by the attention, and I think it helped convince her that we were a normal party.

Soon we were on our way once again. The path was wide enough for us to travel two abreast, so each party travelled in single file next to each other. Cloridan was in the lead, which put him next to Oadi, who was the Outlander’s ranger, and I was second, putting me next to Ildas. She was a [Cleric], and I was able to identify her God from her holy symbol. It was the symbol for Rakaro, the God of Storms, which was about the limit of my knowledge.

Ildas was the closest I’d come to a [Cleric] since coming here, and I was a little nervous that she’d either welcome me as a sister or denounce me as another God’s Champion, but she did neither. Instead, we just chatted.

From the sound of it, most of the others were doing the same thing. Well, Cloridan was chatting up Oadi, but the others were mostly sharing information about the town. You might think we would be more interested in the upcoming dungeon, but we’d all been researching and briefing each other yesterday about that until we were sick of it. Learning which store sold the best dried rations was much more engaging.

My own conversation was somewhat reduced, as Ildas had the hardest time matching our pace with her short legs. She managed, but she was running rather than jogging. From what I knew of Dwarves, I suspected her increased [Stamina] burn wasn’t going to bother her though.

You might think Ralin was in an even worse spot, but she had her own solution. Her reduced weight, combined with comparable strength to bigger folk, meant she could sort of skip along, travelling about four of her paces with each small jump. It must still have counted as [Running] though, as I knew that the [Stamina] cost for repeated jumps added up quickly.

We reached the dungeon without further incident. It was quite picturesque - a small building overrun with vines, that seemed to consist of nothing more than the steps down. Ancient flagstones all around seemed to have prevented trees from taking over, and four broken columns stood in a square at the furthest extent of the paving.

The building was covered in intricate carvings of animals. Looking more closely, I realised that they were of the Chimeras that this dungeon produced. Griffins, Owlbears, Hawk-wolves…

The other party had seen this before and paid no attention to it, walking straight up to the stairs. They stopped when they saw we were gawking at the decorations.

“Come on,” Cerise said. “You’ll be seeing the real things soon enough.”

I flushed slightly, and we moved forward hurriedly. The stairs led down to a large room with three arched entryways. Cerise gestured for me to take the first pick. Each archway led to a different way to the next level, meaning that three parties could run the dungeon without interacting except at the final boss chamber.

“Cloridan?” I asked, and he moved forward, examining the first archway.

“Found it!” he called. “It’s been triggered.”

Each route had a trap right at the entrance. The traps reset a little while after all three had been triggered or disabled. Cloridan moved on to the next entrance.

“This one’s good,” he said. He poked a dagger between two stones in the wall, and there was a twanging sound.

“Do you want him to take a look at the third corridor?” I asked. “You don’t seem to have a trap specialist.”

“It’s fine,” Cerise assured me. “We know where the traps are, for the upper level at least.” She took a rock and threw it at the wall just behind the third archway. There was a ‘thwok’ noise, and three darts hit the opposite wall.

“See you on the other side,” she said. “Best hurry before they reset.”

We took her advice, moving into the middle corridor. This dungeon had an abandoned ruins theme, so the walls consisted of stones that had once been finely cut and laid, but were now weathered and covered with moss. Rhis had informed me that such things were a purely aesthetic choice, having no effect on the durability of the walls.

Adventurers loved to bash down walls, Rhis had told me - it was one of his pet peeves. He’d made extensive use of dimensional manipulation in his dungeon just to prevent this. Except for a few special areas where he’d permitted it, all of the barriers were at least ten metres thick, even if they appeared to be much less. Stunts like that were the main reason that Oakway had grown so slowly.

I had no idea if this dungeon used similar tricks, but we hadn’t heard of any benefit from wall smashing, so I wasn’t inclined to try here. If only because I would never hear the end of it.

Somewhat detracting from the ‘ruin’ theme were the lit torches attached to the walls. I think the idea was that the ruins had been taken over by the mad wizard making all the Chimeras, and he needed to see where he was going.

We came to the first door, and Cloridan got to work disarming the trap and picking the lock. We carefully opened the door and peeked inside. This dungeon changed up its monsters each run, so we wanted to get an identification before entering.

The four cages in this room contained what looked like normal panthers, except for the fact that their fur glistened slickly. The bars were too close together to get a crossbow bolt through, but there was enough line of sight for an identification.

[Identification]: Milax Panther - Threat: 12 - Properties: Immune (Blunt Weapons), Acidic slime.

Ah, if Janie was here, we could have toasted them in the cages, I lamented to myself. But there were other ways to cheat. As we’d discussed, I started the fight by casting.

I cast [Blind] twice, and only then did Cloridan and Kyle enter. Triggered by their entrance - it was a magical trigger that couldn’t be disabled, the cages slid into the floor, releasing the panthers. Two of them continued to snarl in confusion, while the two that were left leapt to the attack.

They were met by Kyle. His [Protector] profession gave him a free parry, so he was easily able to fend the two cats off with his shield, while still dealing damage. That left Cloridan to use his crossbow to pick off the two blinded ones. It would have been faster for him to join Kyle, but daggers weren’t the best weapons against something that oozed acidic slime.

Felicia and I handled reloading. Not the most glamorous of roles, but it was faster for us to switch crossbows with Cloridan, rather than have him reload himself. He had to make a lot of shots. Kyle finished his opponents first, and was able to put the finishing blow on the final blinded one.

Your party has killed a Milax Panther - your experience share is 180 XP

Your party has killed a Milax Panther - your experience share is 180 XP

Your party has killed a Milax Panther - your experience share is 180 XP

Your party has killed a Milax Panther - your experience share is 180 XP

“Are these worth anything?” I asked Felicity. She shook her head.

“They can be boiled down to valuable alchemical components, but we don’t have the time,” she said. “And we can’t take them with us, since the acid will spoil whatever else is in the bag.”

“Ick. How’s your sword, Kyle?” I asked.

“It’s fine,” he said, carefully wiping it down with a rag. The rag smoked, but he was wearing gauntlets, so he’d probably be fine. “Silversteel isn’t normally affected by acids.”

“These crossbow bolts are mostly ruined,” Cloridan said ruefully. “But I found our rewards.” He held up four -

“Collars?” I asked sceptically, and then Felicia gasped.

[Identification]: Dragon-hide Collars - Quality: Great - Properties: Immunity (All typed)

“There’s not much of it,” Cloridan allowed, “And it’s not like it makes the wearer immune. But still.”

“Where does a dungeon get dragon-hide from?” Felicia asked incredulously.

“It just makes it, like everything else,” I said.

“Most of the dragon-hide in the world is of dungeon-make,” Cloridan agreed. “After all, who’d be crazy enough to kill a dragon just to skin it?”