Kyrel

After plummeting through the air for a second or two, Kyrel collided with a steeply sloped ground. He struggled to halt his decent with either his hands, feet, and prayers, but he continued to viciously drop in altitude. The sound of scrambling above him and below him let him know that he was nowhere near the only one who had leapt before he looked. Thankfully he didn’t break anything in the fall, and with any luck this would be his group escaping from pursuit.

Some amount of time later, the slope beneath Kyrel disappeared and he found himself shooting through the air for a brief moment of time again. He managed to bend his legs to suck up the impact as just before his feet contacted the ground and followed it up by dropping his center of gravity and doing a roll. He came out the other end of his drop dustier, but very much intact. Thuds sounded around him, followed by scuffling and heavy breathing, clueing him in to the general area that his fellow mercenaries arrived.

Nobody shouted or screamed, cursed or cried out in pain. Each and every one of them were experienced with stealth missions and knew that a single shout of alarm could be the death of them in this new and unknown region. Kyrel stomped his foot twice and then dragged it across the surface beneath him, signaling the others to gather around him. If something down there hadn’t been alerted by the fact that it was raining men, then a couple of stomps wouldn’t be what gave them away.

A rhythmic tap let him know that his command had been received and would be carried out. In short order, the meaty thumps of men slamming into the ground stopped along with the scrambling. In the distance, Kyrel could see a lightly glowing tunnel but it did not cast enough light for him or his men to see in the room they were currently contained in.

“Light.” As requested, two magelights went up and illuminated the area. Without being asked to, the mages limited the amount of mana they funneled through the spell and the group was greeted with dim, low-casting lights, not too much brighter than the distant glow. A frown crossed Kyrel’s face almost instantly, two lights were far too few and much less than expected. His eyes cast around the group to do a headcount and realized they were missing several people, and almost all of them were mages.

No, that wasn’t right. Well it was, but the fact that they were mages wasn’t why they were targeted. In his remaining group of 78 men, he’d had 14 women remaining, and every single one of them was missing. The nets that had been tossed at the retreating mercenaries had been capturing women, and only women. Unfortunately, almost all his mages had also been women and he now found himself lacking most of his firepower. It was not an abnormal picture, women were far more likely to be born with active mana properties than men were, in the human race at least.

Still, it did not bode well for them. The two remaining mages slowly increased the intensity of the light, expanding their vision until the entire room was visible. Kyrel quickly confirmed that they were underground, an easy assumption when you fall several feet down a tunnel and end up in a dark area, but in a forest with space-altering effects it was better to confirm than assume.

“We seem to be alone in the room, light a few torches and get ready to move out. It seems like we have been dropped into the dungeon.” Kyrel looked to the mages for confirmation. He wasn’t particularly sensitive to mana, but both men gave him a nod to confirm that the density and composition of the ambient mana had shifted to what they would expect from the darkness aligned dungeon. “That settles it, we had the bad luck necessary to fall into a pit, straight into the dungeon. Lucky for us, we know how to fight, and it shouldn’t be hard to fight our way out.”

Torches were lit, weapons were retrieved from where they had been dropped, and wounds were bandaged. The room they found themselves in wasn’t too large, and there was only one entrance/exit if one didn’t count the steep sky-light that was out of reach. The group slowly made their way over to the lightly glowing tunnel before entering it, two men abreast. The short swords found themselves in the vanguard, the crossbows and ranged weapons center mass, along with the mages, and the more exotic weapon users were in the back.

The tunnel extended for about 15 minutes and was filled with twists and turns. The walls were covered in lightly glowing fungus that gave off a pale green light. Other than that, the tunnel was very one dimensional, there were no traps or tricks, and everything looked the same. The plain stone walls and ground all blurred together with no identifying marks, apart from the fungus. The only event worth noticing was the light flicking and faint popping from the torches, almost as if they were in a breeze that nobody but they could feel. By the time they exited the cramped spaces, Kyrel felt they’d turned back on themselves at least three times. Apparently, the forest wasn’t the only location in the area that left one confused about their orientation.

The tunnel opened to a large cave, so large that Kyrel couldn’t clearly spot where the ceiling was, the ceiling going so far up that the dim light from the glowing fungus trailed off into oblivion. The group slowly spilled out of the narrow tunnel and formed up quickly, not walking too far into the cave until everyone behind them was ready to proceed. When everybody was cleared out, the area was still silent, and no movement was seen. The two mages started chucking out magelights as bright and far as they could, giving the illusion that a meteor shower was taking place within the dungeon as bright lights arced through the air and slowly descended to the ground.

As the lights returned to the ground it painted a picture of a razed city. Ramshackle buildings leaned haphazardly here and there, with holes in the roofs and walls. Some of the more ill-advised buildings were even stacked two or three stories high, listing sharply to one side or another. There was no movement to be seen, the only life that Kyrel could detect was the glowing fungus and a several other fields of various types of mushrooms that stood almost as tall as he did. A small trail was worn into the stone beneath their feet, slightly smoother than the rest of the cave that stretched out around them.

The group slowly made their way forward, their footsteps echoing around the space along with the crackling and popping of the torches, causing the hair on the mercenaries’ necks to stand up. The gloomy, depressing nature of the dark mana slowly seeped in through their pores, putting everyone either on edge or dulling their senses. By the time they crossed into the decrepit village, every single one of them was ready to leave, not that they hadn’t been before.

After passing a few of the derelict hovels, another form of life presented itself. Boot sized beetles began appearing, scatting as soon as they entered torch light. They seemed to live in or around the large man-sized mushrooms and would scatter up the vertical stocks whenever the firelight touched them. Their oversized pinchers and gleaming shells made Kyrel glad that they seemed unaggressive. Unfortunately, not everybody felt the same way. Several of the men hated insects with a passion, or they were brain damaged, either way they would kick out at any of the beetles that strayed too close to their path.

“Are you trying to tempt fate? Leave the fucking beetles alone before you get us all killed.” Kyrel hissed at one of men. Most of them stopped, or at least made it a point to kick the beetles out of earshot while their leader wasn’t looking. Eventually, one of the beetles was kicked viciously into a large mushroom top, causing it to release its spores everywhere in a thick cloud that blotted out vision. By this point, most of the mercenaries had already pulled up bandanas to cover their faces in a poor attempt to stop the depressing mana from seeping in, so they weren’t too worried about inhaling them. Kyrel shot a glare to a very bashful looking merc behind him and continued forward.

The trouble came when one of the torchbearers passed through the spore cloud. Since they’d lit the torches, they had been slowly popping and crackling away as they burned away the spores that were so thick in the air that they may as well have been part of the ambient mana. Nobody could spot them in the dark, so they hadn’t really spotted the danger. As it was, several of the mercenaries’ lungs were lightly coated in mushroom spores from before they’d pulled up their face coverings. The more immediate danger, however, presented itself with the cloud of spores went up in flames, burning the torch bearer alive and igniting a large fireball.

As trained as the men were, nobody burned alive without screaming in pain and anguish. His screams echoed through the air as more man-sized mushrooms dumped their loads into the air, propagating more fireballs in a chain reaction. Several of the torch bearers were quick on the uptake and chucked their torches away, and others burned alive for their slow reaction speed. Nine men died. Kyrel wish he could have said that they instantly died, but it took some time for the fire to do its work. Crossbows whistled out as like-minded men helped Kyrel end the suffering of the poor bastards.

The screaming cut off, followed by a meaty thud as another crossbow bolt lodged itself in the eye socket of the moron who couldn’t stop kicking beetles. No sense letting the man get more people killed.