The spiders had a lot of cash lying around, over five hundred gold pieces alone, and about a dozen magic items. There was one item usable by all, a pair of boots

Glarin's Boots of Evasion

+2 Dexterity

+2 Intelligence

+4 Armor

that Maria offered to me, but I told her that Rayna or Neara would probably get greater benefit from them since they both had intelligence related skills. They eventually gave them to Rayna, which I thought was a smart move since a forty point boost to her mana would probably be pretty useful.

"You sure?" Rayna asked doubtfully when she took them. She was holding the boots in her left hand, staff in the other, blue eyes giving me a concerned look as she asked me. It was sort of funny that boots, clothes, and armor really were one size fits all and something that would fit Bob's huge frame would just as easily fit Dalmar's.

I shrugged and said "Yeah. We've got a lot of years to accumulate stuff, and +2 of anything other than wisdom isn't really worth worrying about"

The rest of the magic got split up, since Maria's people were doing what I had done, and arming their guards with magic stuff now. I took a helmet of +2 strength to pass along to Andulin when we got back.

"I wonder how many eternals have formed larger groups like this to do dungeons?" Anna asked as we followed Dalmar to the cavern exit.

He decided to keep the four person front, with Bob and Anna, and he and Diana leading the way. Maria, Neara, and Rayna all watched for traps, and I was the rear guard, with Bruce in my left hand. I hadn't tried fighting with my left hand, but a couple of practice swings felt no different than my right.

"A couple I've heard of, though they were both for a single dungeon crawl" Dalmar said as we started into the tunnel he had picked. Rayna had a torch, and Bob had that glowing sword thing I had never asked him about.

"To crowded in most places" Maria said "so you don't get much more than the chance to rotate who's in front. It's also pretty rare to find eight people who can all get along doing stuff like this"

"It's been less than a year since everyone got here" Bob said, his eyes staying focused to the front "and the way they put people in here, I think they wanted everyone to fight. It'll take a while for things to really settle down enough for people to start trusting each other" he glanced back at me, then forward again before adding "and that's only because Jake's people are handling the worst ones"

That seemed to give everyone something to think about, since conversation stopped until a couple of hours later when Dalmar signaled a halt for the evening and everyone settled in to cook dinner.

The tunnels were pretty much unchanging unless you reached a cavern or found a crossroads, so the spot he picked looked no different than any other spot we had passed the last few days. Stone walls, floor and ceiling, and a thin layer of dust on the floor. This dust seemed to have been disturbed here and there, but looking like maybe a spider or two had wandered out and back.

We passed a couple of roughly dug tunnels the next day, one an hour after we started walking. It looked like something had dug through the rock and dirt, leaving a very rough tunnel that led off to the south for the two we passed. Based on the tracks in the dust, it looked like something big had tunneled in, then walked down the hallway about an hour and tunneled back out. Considering the hole size of its tunnel and tracks in the dirt, the thing had more than two legs, and was probably about eight feet tall. It was kind of weird that there wasn't any dirt and stones scattered around the outside of the rough tunnel, but this world got weird with stuff like that. I doubt whatever it was ate its way through the soil.

"I'm sure whatever it was would want to eat us though" Rayna said with a laugh when I commented on that, getting nods of agreement from the group.

A day of walking, an uneventful night, then another couple of hours brought us to the lava flow Dalmar had mentioned. The tunnel was straight as a ruler, so we saw the light from a fair distance, but we stopped at Dalmar's raised hand as he said "Hold up. Someone's fighting up there"

Dalmar turned to give Maria a questioning look, getting her to come forward, nodding for Neara to follow her. The two of them disappeared twenty paces ahead of us and the rest of us sort of settled into a defensive circle and waited. I was interested to note that I could see the tracks in the dust the two of them made as they left. I would have to see about figuring out something I could carry to duplicate that if I ever needed to keep my eyes our for invisible people.

It was less than five minutes later before Neara suddenly appeared in front of us to say "Undead. They're fighting some kind of golem that's defending a bridge over the lava. Maria says we need to help the golem"

"Alright" Dalmar said gruffly, pulling his hammer off his shoulder and starting to follow Neara as she turned to head back toward the red light at the end of the tunnel "Fight in pairs, Jake and Rayna let us clear the entrance, then do what ever is best" he had moved in to a jog with Diana beside him, both with their warhammers held across their front.

Bob and Anna trotted beside them as Rayna and I brought up the rear, the jingle and clank of armor and weapons announcing our presence to anyone who was close enough to hear. Neara sort of yelled over her shoulder to tell us "It's some kind of giant silver golem. Forty or fifty undead attacking him, one of them is an ogre and they have a magic user"

A sudden wash of white light pulsed out of Bob, sort of like a billowing cloud that flowed over our group, then faded. It left a feeling of...health I guess, or maybe strength, and a soft white glow around everyone that faded over the course of a few seconds.

"Telina's Blessing" Bob said "Double damage to undead for an hour"

"Oh hell yeah!" Diana growled "Ass kicking time"

Couldn't have said it better myself.

The red glow of the lava river was visible a long distance, but I couldn't actually see it until we cleared the tunnel because the lava was about ten feet below the cavern floor in an arrow straight, one hundred foot wide canal that flowed out of a tunnel to the north before traveling the length of the cavern to flow out another cave to the south. The cavern itself was probably three hundred feet wide east to west and six hundred long north to south, with us coming out of the tunnel close to the south-west end of the cavern.

A twenty foot wide, flat stone bridge crossed the lava river in the center of the cavern and was level with the cavern floor. There was a two foot stone wall running the length of the bridge on both sides to keep you from stumbling off, and right in the middle of the bridge was a fifteen foot tall silver dwarf. It was some kind of golem obviously, but it was also a perfectly detailed giant dwarf, if, you know, that wasn't a contradiction. The thing was swinging a huge, double bladed axe like Jeff had used, only this one was eight feet long, with the blades three or four feet across. You could sometimes hear the clank of metal on stone whenever the golem took a step, but it was mostly masked by the loud sounds of metal on metal as axe met undead armor, or undead weapons clanged on the golem's metal body. Neither the undead or the golem were yelling or making any other sounds, until I heard what sounded like chanting coming from one of the undead on the other side of the river.

"Bob, Anna, Diana with me" Dalmar yelled as he trotted toward our end of the bridge "Jake, hold your group on this side and cover us"

Maria appeared as Dalmar turned right onto the bridge, but just gave him a grin as he passed before pulling an arrow, nocking it, then sending it streaking across the bridge to hit the chanting magic user in the head. I chuckled as the magic user was in the middle of shouting "Amakash Brankeeeee" and it trailed off into a high pitched squeal when the arrow hit.

When I stopped next to Maria I focused on the Golem.

Dwarven Guardian

Level 22

Health 640

The thing had taken a fair amount of damage, and while not bleeding, had dark cuts and dents over most of his body. There was gear from a lot of undead scattered from the far side of the bridge to where the golem was making his stand, showing he had taken down probably thirty or forty of the undead already as he slowly retreated back from the far side, and since I didn't see an ogre, must have killed it too. I cast a heal spell on the golem, not really even considering if it would work, or if he might not be happy about it. When the glow settled on him and a lot of the damage across his body faded away, I sent another, then looked over the undead horde.

The golem's axe tended to cut them in half or throw their bodies into the lava, but he wasn't immune to the swords, arrows and hammers they were hitting him with, just very resistant. Maria, Neara, and Rayna were targeting the magic user in the back of the undead crowd as Dalmar and Diana went to the right of the golem, and Bob and Anna the left. The four of them slammed into the dwarven draugr with an almost synchronized yell as we got to see what double damage meant in a fight like this.

Dalmar's hammer swept down on an undead dwarf his own size, one that held a similar warhammer up to block, only to have it driven straight down as Dalmar's hammer hit the thing right in the head, causing it to basically explode into a pile of dust and gear. Diana's glowing red hammer did something similar, but the glow from the hammer seemed to be something that caused the things armor to act like it was dumped into the lava, turning red and causing flames to shoot out from under it. The draugr lasted a second or two longer than Dalmar's but not by much.

Bob and Anna's swords weren't as dramatic, but were just as effective. The golem took a step back in surprise as the four people surged around him, then it glanced back at my group, studying us for a second before nodding at me and turning to reenter the fray. The guardian looked like an actual dwarf that had been sprayed with silver paint, again, if there was such a thing as a giant dwarf. Chain mail with a heavy belt at the waist, helm without any horns, and a trimmed beard similar to Dalmar's. I almost laughed as I remembered those people who painted themselves and acted like statues back in the other reality.

I was pretty much a spectator for the rest of the fight, not even needing to cast any healing spells as our four fighters and the golem began pounding, slicing, and chopping their way across the bridge at a slow walk. The golem didn't have room for a side to side swing, so settled on just chopping downward any time an undead was in front of him. The loss of the magic user seemed to weaken the undead group and leave them without any ranged attacks.

Rayna stuck with magic missiles, though like with Sienna, they were devastating when used like this. Rayna was level 8 or 9 now, so I was guessing the six bolts were doing something like ninety or a hundred points of damage, enough to kill some of the lesser undead in one shot apparently. I made a mental note in my mental notebook to look into a way to protect myself from mages like her since they were way overpowered for this world. I was probably going to regret suggesting they go the defensive mage route.

The fight was over pretty quickly as our four people and the golem basically walked over the rest of the undead as the undead fought to the last...thing. I nodded for Maria, Neara and Rayna to follow, and we started across the bridge as the last couple of draugr went down. Being in the middle of a lava river should have meant burning to death, or asphyxiating very quickly, but it was only slightly warmer and I didn't feel any need to gasp for breath.

Our fighters had formed a group behind Dalmar by the time we joined the crowd, and the golem stepped back so it could see both of our groups. It sort of studied each of us as we kind of uniformly seemed to agree to wait for it to say something. It's gaze finally rested on Dalmar and it spoke.

"You are an eternal, yet you are of the People" it said, the voice surprisingly normal sounding, though as deep as you might expect. You could hear he meant to capitalize People, so I assumed he meant dwarves.

"Your assistance calls for some level of gratitude" it continued, eyes staying on Dalmar "but it is my duty to defend the western entrance from any other than those who offer no harm to the People"

"We intend no harm" Dalmar said as he rested his hammer on the ground, then nodded for everyone else to sheathe their weapons. Waving around our group, Dalmar said "We have two quests to fulfill in Lor Frell. The first is to recover the Anvil of the Master Smith" he paused, but when the golem didn't say anything, said "The second is to destroy the ArchLich and the undead inhabiting Lor Frell"

"Hmmm" the golem sort of rumbled, its eyes flicking from Dalmar to me, then to Maria, before seeming to look at the bracers on the women's arms for some reason. Looking back at Dalmar it said "It has been some tens of years since any of the people have crossed my bridge, and that group now forms much of the army of undead that attempt to destroy me. As long as the Lich survives, the undead killed here will rise again in time"

"How far have they spread?" Bob asked

The golem studied Bob for a few seconds, but spoke to Dalmar when it said "They have not overcome the four guardians... yet, but they have pushed into the goblin caves when the goblins tunneled into the lower mines. The goblins resist, but they are being pushed out of their caverns. As the Lich gathers more dead, it will soon be able to overcome myself or one of the other guardians and begin to spread via the underroads"

It looked around the group as it said "All of you glow with power of the goddesses, some more than others. It is strange to see such in a small group like this..." his eyes moved back to Maria before adding "and even more to see one who has been touched by four"

Maria stepped forward to stand beside Dalmar and looked up at the golem as she said "The goddesses have come together in hopes of destroying the blight and limiting the damage done by eternals such as ourselves. We intend no harm to the Dwarven people"

"Truth" the golem said with a nod, but turned back to Dalmar to say "and I will not hinder your quests, but must tell you that neither will be easily accomplished" it raised an arm and pointed to a tunnel to the right of the bridge, about a hundred feet to the south and said "The city of Lor Frell lies above us, and the anvil you seek resides within the forge of Master Smith Vargon BlackHammer, at the north end of the great square. You should know that while the dragons do not reside in the city, wyverns have taken residence there to scavenge from the dragon's kills"

The golem's hand pointed to a matching tunnel to the north as he said "The undead reside in the mines below the city, and the ArchLich has had many years to consolidate his power there" Then he turned and walked to the center of the bridge with a heavy metal on stone clanging sound, stopped in the middle facing to the west, and froze.

"I guess we were done talking" Rayna said with a laugh, getting a chuckle from Dalmar as we gathered in a circle. Dalmar looked around the group, then shrugged and said "Ideas?"

"We split up" Bob said with his own shrug "Dalmar's here for the anvil, and the paladins and I are here to take care of the Lich. Maria and Jake go with Dalmar, and the rest of us head down to the mines"

"That'll leave them shorthanded" Anna said with a doubtful look at me and Maria

"Pish posh" Maria said with dismissive wave of her hand "A city full of wyverns? Hardly worth sending more than two of us. It'll give Jake and Sam something to do other than stand around and look pretty"

"Thanks for looking out for me" I said sarcastically, getting a round of laughs from the group.

Maria giggled, then sobered a little before saying "It's what you five are here for after all, so it'll give you a chance to get used to each other before you end up facing something harder. We break into to groups, and if possible, whoever finishes first can maybe join up with the other, but if not, we meet up back at the castle or in Mudtown"

"You really need to rename your town" Diana said to me, getting a nod from Bob of all people. I shrugged at the idea, but said "I kind of like it. The fewer eternals who visit the better, and who wants to visit a place called Mudtown?"

"It just, you know, sounds..." Diana ended with a shrug, obviously not wanting to be too insulting.

Hey, Loser here" I said with a chuckle "If I ever manage to get that changed, maybe I'll see about changing the town name"

"Let me know if you do find a way to change your name" Bob said ruefully, then got serious again to say "So, we agree, two teams?"

It didn't take long to break up our original group, then send out team requests. It was sort of cool to be back in the same group I started this whole thing with, though having Bob along would have brought the dragon slaying team together.

"Look around for that Hainar stone Siroka talked about" I told Bob as everyone was exchanging hugs and handshakes "It might be useful later"

"Will do" Bob said his team gathered, then headed toward their tunnel with one last round of waves. Bob was kind of in the center, with the four black cloaked women surrounding him. They looked formidable, and it would be fun to hear Bob tell the tale of their adventures back at Samuels tavern.

The three of us watched them walk away, then Dalmar said "Well, it's just Maria's Marauders again" getting a giggle from Maria as we turned and headed toward our own tunnel.

The tunnel we entered looked generally like the ones we had been following, being smooth stone and twenty feet wide, though it appeared to have a very gentle upward curving rise to the right. And this one had two grooves in the floor, both five feet in from the opposite walls, and running as far as we could see. A low, eight or nine foot wide, flat, four wheeled cart sat just inside the tunnel entrance on the right hand side, with a metal cable attached to the bottom. The cable rose out of the groove in the floor to an attach point, then continued back into the floor on the back side.

"Some kind of mine style cart" Dalmar said, stepping over to look at. It really was just a flat platform two feet off the ground with floor wheels. There was a lever on the front right side, and after a glance at us, and nods all around, we stepped onto the cart. The lever was low for me, but sized right for a dwarf, so Dalmar stood beside it, then gently pulled it back until we heard a clunk and the cart gave a jerk, then began moving forward at a fast walking speed.

"Awesome" Maria said with a laugh, sitting down, then leaning back on her hands as she shook her hair back and grinned at me and Dalmar "to bad they didn't have this from the beginning"

I lowered myself down next to her and said "Must run on magic somehow and I bet they have one that comes back down"

The tunnel basically wound upward in a wide, gently rising circle. We relaxed after the first couple of minutes, and I finally asked "So what's a wyvern?"

Both Dalmar and Maria chuckled before Maria said "I'm not absolutely sure, but I think it's like a small dragon"

Dalmar nodded and said "Yeah, I think that's right. If I remember right, it either had a poison bite, or maybe a poison stinger on the tail, and wasn't four legged like a real dragon. More like a bird I think, and supposedly not as intelligent"

"How small?" I asked, getting a couple of shrugs back before Dalmar said "Bigger than a person, but a lot smaller than a true dragon"

"As long as it doesn't breath fire we should be ok then" I said before lying back with my hands under my head "wake me when we get there"

A nudge on my shoulder from Maria woke me when the cart slowed to a halt in what looked like an empty warehouse. The room was large, but the first thing I noticed was actual sunlight shining in from a door on the opposite side of the room from me. The door was as wide as the tunnels we had been traveling in, but it had a thick iron barred gate blocking it. The room we were in was longer to my right and left, then it was the fifty feet to the barred doorway. There were empty carts lined up to my right, but nothing else in the room.

We climbed off the cart and headed toward the gate without discussion, all of us looking forward to being in the sun again. The thick bars were only a foot apart as they covered the whole entrance, but there was a door on the right side that was obviously used to go in and out when the entrance was barred.

I was kind of expecting to be looking out from the side of the mountain onto the plains below, but outside the gate was a street and stone buildings lining the other side that appeared to be carved out of the stone of the mountain itself. We appeared to be in a narrow canyon in the mountain, with the city carved into the stone. The side I could see appeared to have more levels above it, each set back some as the mountain went up, with a low wall on the open side of a road in front of the buildings.

"Kind of like Gondor if it was in a canyon, and the stone was grey" Dalmar said. I surprised myself by actually getting that reference.

There was a considerable amount of damage to the buildings higher up, with some showing signs of fire, and others broken and melted as if from some kind of acid. A few bones of dwarves were on the street outside, causing Maria to say "It seems weird to see skeletons when everything disappears when you kill it"

"Sets the mood" I said, craning my head right and left as I tried to see as far as possible down the street. It was all stone buildings as far as I could see, upward, as well as right and left. There was a bit of an overhang above us, but I didn't see anything moving, and nothing dragon like, so I said "Looks clear"

Of course something let out a loud screech from above us a I finished speaking, getting a chuckle from Dalmar as we headed toward the door.

"I can feel a few large creatures above us" Maria said, her head canted up slightly, eyes distant

Dalmar opened the door with a bit of a squeak of rusty hinges, then blocked the way as he looked around and said "Gonna be a bitch to fight flying creatures in this canyon. We need to see if we can find a path with some cover"

The three of us slipped through the door, then stood with our backs to the front of the barred entrance so we could see if we could figure out some way of moving without getting eaten.

We really were in a long canyon, and at least on the other side, there were four more levels above this one before the mountaintop came to a peak with a broken tower on it. To the right the canyon did a slow curve and we couldn't see much past a couple of hundred feet, but what I was guessing was the great square was on our left. The roadway opened up about ten buildings down on our left, and I could see the buildings and canyon continue on the opposite side, making the square about four hundred feet across. There was a broken and burned mound in the center of the square that might have once been a statue or fountain, but I couldn't tell from the pile of rubble.

"Maria?" Dalmar said "You want to take a look around?"

"On it" she said, just before disappearing

I saw my first wyvern a few minutes after she left, as the thing dropped from above to settle on the mound in the center of the square. It did look a lot like a dragon, with the extended, teeth filled snout, reptilian scales, and leathery wings. But this thing only had two legs, meaning it had to sit sort of upright like a duck, though it was a mean looking duck. The wings stayed open part way for balance as the wyvern nosed the pile for a moment, then down stroked to push the creature back into the air. It was sort of ungainly on the ground and during take off, but looked graceful as it swooped into the canyon and away from us. I did see it had a scorpion like needle at the end of the tail and was about a foot taller than me when upright. I said quietly "Guessing it was a poison tail"

It took Maria close to a half hour, and I was getting a little concerned by the time she appeared next to Dalmar. She grinned as she said "There are a lot of wyverns above us" pausing to nod upward "but the dwarves have hallways on the backside of these buildings, so we can move fairly safely until we get to the square" She leaned out and pointed to our left, saying "You can't see it from here, but the forge is on the left, right in the center of the buildings on that side. Hallway ends at the square, so we can't go in the back of the forge, you'll have to run the fifty feet"

She turned back and waggled her eyebrows as she said "Did you know that forges have big open fronts? Well they do. Would you like to guess what decided a room like that would make a great nest?"

"Crap" I muttered, getting a nod from Maria as she said "Yep, a big one too. I couldn't get close enough to look inside without it smelling me, but I think the anvil would probably have been pushed against the inside walls"

"How do you want to do this?" Dalmar asked her

"Follow me and we'll get into the building next to us. Safer than standing out here" Maria said before looking up to the right and left, then cat footing away with Dalmar, then me behind her.

As soon as we cleared the narrow opening, a dozen screeches sounded above us, making us give up on sneakiness and break into a run. A bunch of shadows appeared around us, and when Dalmar ran through the door on his left, I dove in behind him, feeling the wind of something as it swooped past as I made it inside.

Dalmar grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him, making me stagger and fall forward again as a wyvern landed outside and thrust its head in the door to snap its teeth closed a few inches from my foot. Its snake like eyes glared as it hissed at us before pulling its head back outside. Its tag said

Wyvern

Level 8

Health 95

"The little ones are so cute" Maria said, then giggled at the looks we gave her.

Sam didn't make an appearance until I was standing again, and once I made the decision not to bother attacking the wyvern, he shrank back into his bracer form. It wasn't perfect control, but it was something. Baby steps.

The room looked like it used to be some kind of store, though it was stripped bare of anything even remotely small enough to carry. If the rest of the city was like this, I had to wonder if the anvil really was at this blacksmith's shop, or if it was just a waypoint in the quest.

Wyverns continued to land outside, stick there head in the door, then pull back to fly away. Squabbles broke out in front of the shop as the creatures fought over who got first dibs on the yummy eternals. After Dalmar gave me a hand up we headed through a door in the back of the room, then through a door in the back of another smaller room. The door opened into a dark hallway that stretched right and left, and Maria turned right. She led us past eight doors on the right side of the hallway, then stopped at a larger door at the end of the hall.

"Opens into the square" Maria said "Nothing attacked when I opened it before, but they wouldn't have been able to see me"

"We need a distraction" I said, then shrugged at their looks and added "Unless we want to fight all the wyverns in front of the forge"

"What if you and I set up on opposite sides of the canyon back there" Maria said to me "Sam should be able to hit any that land outside, and we can tag team them?"

"And I take care of the big one and grab the anvil" Dalmar said slowly, his eyes squinting as he considered things

"What's our exit strategy?" I asked, trying to picture the set up Maria was talking about. Based on every other monster that wanted to eat us, these should stay pretty focused once we had their attention "We'll have all the creatures clustered in front of the tunnel we came up"

"Or..." Maria said with a grin, then paused until Dalmar and I gave her questioning looks before adding "maybe we do what Jake said and fight them in the forge. We kick the big one out, find the anvil, rack up some experience, then go out the back and do some exploring in the city"

"They have a hallway like this one behind the forge?" Dalmar asked

Maria shrugged and said "Don't know for sure, but it looks like it from what I could see peeking in the front. Door in the back leads to something"

"What level is the big one?" I asked "and is there anything left in this city to make it worth exploring?"

"17" Maria answered, then added "210 health, so it shouldn't be that hard" she followed that with a shrug and said "Bunch of stuff scattered in the forge, and not every building seemed to be as picked clean as the one we came through"

"Upper levels would have been harder to evacuate" Dalmar said thoughtfully "and we did say we would look for books for Wendal"

"Damn, that's right" I said. I nodded to Maria then and added "I doubt there's any reason to try and be sneaky about this. If we all charge into the forge, is there room?"

That got a nod from Maria, and she squatted down to draw a square in the dust, then added a circle in the middle and drew two lines on one wall before saying "The front is open, but it is partially enclosed, so the room is bigger than the opening. Doubt more than one wyvern at a time can get in, but it does leave us room to get around the one in there"

We all considered her drawing for a few seconds, then Maria stood back up and said "So how do we do this?"

Dalmar looked up at me, so I said "Well, if Dalmar still thinks he can kick the big one's ass, I'll try to cover the opening. Maria stays hidden until she's inside, then she backs us up. Once the big one's dead, Dalmar finds the anvil and we retreat to the doorway at the back of the forge" I gave them a questioning look and added "Sound good?"

Maria and Dalmar exchanged looks, then shrugs before Dalmar looked back and said "Simple enough I guess"

"Let me do a blessing and my armor spell" I said, doing just that. I pulled Bruce up and held him in my left hand, planning to try the two weapon thing again. I cast Fist, then did a restore before looking over at my friends with a grin, and holding Bruce up I said "Let's go introduce some Wyverns to my buddy Bruce"

Maria laughed as we all turned to the closed doorway, Dalmar in front. He glanced back, and at our nods, lifted the latch and pushed the door open, taking off into his surprisingly quick run. I was right behind him as we stepped out into the light and I got a look at the square. The ruined statue in the center of the square was to my right front, and I could see the opening for the forge a good hundred feet ahead on my left. The whole thing was ringed with what looked like shops, and they had suffered a fair amount of damage, though a couple still looked closed up, at least at my running glance around.

We were spotted about half way to the forge, and a whole chorus of Wyvern screams came from above us as the shadows began sliding along the ground to show we only had a couple seconds before something landed on us. Dalmar had his big hammer held in two hands and cocked over his right shoulder as a Wyvern stuck it's head out of the forge, and he swung hard, hitting it on the side of the head, slamming it's face into the left side of the opening. Dalmar kept going, so I copied him, bringing Bruce upward to catch the Wyvern under the chin, slamming it's head into the top of the entrance as I spun to a stop just inside. Sam immediately flowed into a whip in my right hand, and as I slid and spun around, I swung Sam forward to catch the first Wyvern to land behind me, right where a wing joined the body as it had flared to a stop.

I heard Dalmar grunt as he swung again, and the Wyvern on my right gave a harsh squawking sound as it moved out of sight behind me. After three solid hits, I figured Dalmar had it covered, so as two more Wyverns landed behind the one I had staggered, I called Fist again, then swung Sam forward to catch the lead one right in the face. A small spray of electrical sparks erupted around the white flare of Telina's Fist, and the Wyvern overbalanced and fell backwards before rolling to my left.

An arrow 'thwipped' as it shot past me to hit the downed Wyvern, and that wyvern turned into a small pile of scales, clearing the way for one of the other two to flare it's wings and hop forward. I didn't have time to call Fist again, so Sam shot out just as the wyvern ducked forward and shot it's stinger over it's head. Our two strikes passed each other, both impacting almost simultaneously. His hit me in my left shoulder, giving me a quick message

Wyvern poison

5 points of damage/second for 5 seconds

The shit burned like acid while it lasted, and that was on top of the 15 points of damage the stinger did. Another arrow zipped past, hitting it in its left eye, and as it squalled and staggered forward, I twisted and swung Bruce up and around to hit it right on the top of the head. The second Wyvern disappeared as two more landed, and the third wyvern did the ducking forward thing and shot its stinger forward, to miss me by a couple of inches.

Swinging Bruce like that left me perfectly set for another whip strike, so I swung at one of the new ones on my left as I did a bit of a duck and dodge to avoid another stinger strike from the one on my right. Righty was to far away for Bruce, so I called Fist as I twisted and swung Sam at him. I repeated that crossing strike thing, and we both took a hit, with me getting a second shot of burning poison, this time in the stomach.

That shit was painful as hell, so I did a bit of a sidestep to my left to gain a second, and did a quick heal on myself. The heal brought immediate relief from acid pain in my shoulder and stomach, but the delay meant I got bit on the leg as two of them managed to crowd forward.

"Son of a Bitch!" I yelled as I brought Bruce straight down on the damn thing's head, driving it to the ground where I stomped on it in aggravation. I heard Maria let out a peal of laughter as an arrow hit the one on my right as it was leaning forward to strike me with its tail. The arrow threw it off, so it missed, giving me time to call Fist, then swing Sam forward to hit it right in the mouth as it hissed at me. I hissed right back at it as I ducked and stepped back, avoiding Mister Bitey's second attempt to nibble on my leg. They had managed to crowd close enough that three of them could use their tails, so I took another step back to block the one on my left, and swung Sam forward to hit the middle one. It wasn't a solid strike, seeming to barely impact the things chest, and I tried to twist clear of a strike from the one on the right. Like me, it didn't get a solid impact, but it left a line of poison along my chest.

"Got it!" Dalmar yelled behind me as an arrow zipped past, maybe two inches from my face, to hit the middle one in the neck. I took another step back, and the middle one, probably thinking I was getting away, hopped forward into the opening, shooting it's head forward, jaws gaping. An arrow went straight down it's gullet a second before I brought Bruce upward to hit it in its lower jaw and snapped its mouth shut. The thing made a 'glunk' noise before falling on its face. Since it was blocking the entrance, I didn't hit it again, just shuffled backward, tossing a quick glance back to see Dalmar and Maria on either side of the back doorway. Good enough. I turned and dashed back to join them, slipping through the door into another room. Maria shot another arrow as Dalmar followed me, then she ducked through the door and to the right, avoiding a stinger that tried to follow her.

The room we were in appeared to be a store, with shelves lining the walls, all of them with assorted weapons and armor on them or the floor in front of them, but it was empty otherwise. We all moved to another door at the back of the room and gathered to look back at the Wyvern hissing and squalling at us from the doorway.

"That was different" Maria said with a chuckle, drawing one from Dalmar as he rested his warhammer on his shoulder and nodded, eyeing the angry wyvern.

"That it was" he said "kind of fun too. We make a good team"

"Dodging actually works" I said with a grin "that was almost like a real fight back home" I ignored the hissing and striking wyvern at the door and looked around at the scattered equipment before saying "Think there's anything good in this?"

"Only one way to find out" Maria said as she sidled along the back wall and over to my right to start poking through the equipment. The wyvern could only get its head inside, so as long as we stayed six or eight feet back, it couldn't reach us. I went to the opposite side of the room from Maria and copied her, but it only took a minute or two to realize none of the items were magical. I looked over, and Maria shrugged and shook her head, so we both joined Dalmar as he opened the back door.

It led into another one of the hallways, so we all moved into it, allowing Dalmar to close the door and shut out the sounds of the pissed off wyvern.

We kind of grouped up, and Maria said excitedly "So!, let's see it"

Dalmar chuckled, but did the pulling something out of inventory move, and a large silver anvil appeared in his hands. The tag said

Anvil of the Master Smith

Grants the possessor the skills of a Master Smith.

"That's it?" Maria said in surprise

The disappointment in her voice got a laugh from Dalmar, but he followed it by saying "It granted me the smithing skill. I've got a whole section added to my stats. Breaks down into weapons, armor, jewelry, then into various metals and has a line that says Other. I have 75% on all of them, so there must be more levels above Master" His eyes got that distant look of someone reading his stats sheet, and he added "Says the anvil is mine until I die, though I don't know if that applies to eternals or not, and that it can't be used by another until I do. It also says I can take on one apprentice, though it doesn't say a damn thing about what that means"

"Cool" Maria said with a nod "So now you find this forge flunky gobbler and learn how to enchant stuff and you'll be in business"

I chuckled and said "ForgeMaster Grevlor" She waved her hand dismissively and said "Whatever. The important thing is that once Dalmar gets good at this, he can make stuff fit for a queen" she kind of nodded suggestively and pointed at herself, drawing a loud laugh from Dalmar. He made the anvil disappear, then grinned at us, getting Maria to give him a suspicious look and say "What?"

"It was a quest" Dalmar said, the grin growing a little "It bumped me up a whole level when I completed it. Level 23. I thought it would be a year or two to make that"

"Holy shit" I mumbled, as Maria squealed and gave Dalmar a hug, trying to picture what level 23 would be like. Dalmar didn't do any flashy stuff like the paladins, but there had to be some serious benefits for being that high. I was level 13 now, so that would be almost six more stat points. It made me wonder what his stats looked like, though that was something we had seemed to silently agree not to ask each other.

I shrugged the thought away and looked up and down the hallway, finding it almost identical to the other one, though it looked like the east end had stairs going up. There had to be some kind of ramp to the other levels outside, but it looked like they used these passages just for pedestrians. Turning back to my friends I said "Onward and Upward?"