“Thanks again for leading the way. If you hadn’t come along, the dwarf probably would have kept us walking in circles to collect those damnable fire fruits he loves so much.”

“Don’t mention it, Kali. I’ve been looking for an excuse to practice magic with my new affinity. Ever since my sister fed me that fruit, I’ve felt like I’ve got a brand new muscle that demands flexing. It’s a little odd, really.” Faeryl responded as she eyed the entrance of the dungeon they were getting ready to enter.

It had been a couple of days since Kali and her new, albeit odd, companions awoke in a tangle of limbs and furniture. She still blushed when she thought about how they’d had to boost the dwarf through her window due to the overwhelming amount of chairs stacked against the door, not to mention the heavy wardrobe. She made a mental note to find a locksmith.

In her defence, she hadn’t actually planned on bringing anyone back home with her, it just sort of worked out that way.

In the days since, she’d kept her ears open and her eyes peeled, looking for some of the unsavory types her father used to run with or any rumors of such. Any hint of an unsavory underbelling wheeling up in the growing town of Annahmia were studiously investigated, usually with nothing turning up. She did have an appointment with a potential lead for later in the week, but there was only so much she could do when the entire town was still cracking down on crime. The local criminals were like skittish rabbits, they’d come out to graze but took off to their burrows the moment they heard someone rustling the grass.

Apart from that, she and her two new companions, Marcello the monk and Issac the dwarf, spent a few afternoons walking around the forest in an attempt to find the dungeon. They’d quickly found out that the forest’s paths seemed to shift, something the rangers said is normally a sign of an enchanted forest, and were unable to find the dungeon on their own. Somehow, however, they constantly found the vibrant red peppers that the locals had taken to calling fire fruit, every day.

Eventually, they found a local who was willing to guide them to the dungeon. Somehow, the forest always seemed to help the locals find exactly what they needed. Only minutes after entering the forest, the group had rounded a tree and found the half-hollowed hill that designated the entrance to the dungeon. After a short break to gather themselves, they started moving forward.

For some reason, Kali had been expecting an ornate entrance held aloft by gilded pillars of silver, marble steps carved with such delicacy that it would take a master a lifetime to replicate their effort. Instead, the dungeon turned out to be a dank hole in the ground, with mud and moss sloping down into a gloomy atmosphere.

The ground was covered in potholes and rocks just tall enough to catch someone’s boots and send them sprawling. Judging by the heavy divots trailing down the slope, at least one poor sod had taken a face plant followed by a slide in that entrance. Even as she was observing it, she heard Issac trip behind her. Lucky for him, his fall was arrested by their sure footed vagabond, Marcello.

They entered into a large moss-covered open room with water slowly dripping from the ceiling even though it hadn’t rained in days. Mushrooms popped up in the corners and up the walls, only visible through the shadows they cast due to their stone-grey appearance. Even with her torch lit, the walls seemed to eat away at the light and cause the radius of light to be far smaller than it should be.

“Didn’t realise we’d need magical torches in here. This ones almost useless.” Kali scowled into the darkness as she waved her torch around looking for potential enemies.

“There used to be veins of quality ore on the walls in here but nobody’s seen them since the invasion. From the few people who have attempted to scout the dungeon since then, we’ve figured out that the tunnels have been changing shape.” Even as she spoke, Faeryl was scribbling down notes of what she saw.

So far all she had was ‘Trip Hazard’ and ‘Darker?’. Kali was jealous of the elf’s natural low-light vision but definitely wouldn’t trade positions for any reason. The amount of discrimination that the drow, dark, and moon elves received was insane in the Laevell kingdom. Even most beastkin were treated better than them, which wasn’t exactly unexpected considering the kingdom’s extensive list of wars waged against the elves on their western border. The only reason the three groups of ‘lesser elfs’ were tolerated was that their hate for their cousins rivaled the human’s own.

“Where are all the monsters? I was under the impression that every room had at least one monster, unless that changed as well I guess.” Issac queried from behind his massive bulwark. Even from where she stood, Kali could smell the red wafting off his giant hunk of metal. Naturally, Issac’s shield was self-made, forged for great defence as well as cooking. No, seriously, it was a cauldron that he could manipulate into transforming a fire-conductive on one side, fire-resistant on the other, goodness to honest, bulwark shield.

“Now now, friend, that's not exactly true is it? Plenty of dungeons have entire rooms that are designed to get in your head and weird you out. Some have several in the row, maybe one would even have a trap in it.” Marcello remarked while unwrapping and rewrapping his hands in the dirty cloth strips that he donned as weapons. He insisted that he was just as deadly barefoot and empty handed as any knight in their armor but Kali was pretty sure he was just too poor to buy armor and too proud to beggar a weapon off his new party.

“If you say so. Hey, since the room is empty… Does anyone mind if I start gathering some of these mushrooms? I’m curious to see if they are edible.” Even as he spoke, Issac shifted the shield to his left hand and approached one of the gatherings of toadstools. To his credit, he did not immediately grab one. He did, however, crouch and stare at it for a while.

From the intense gaze on his face, Kali could tell that he was peering not only at the mushroom, but past the mushroom. She should have expected that he was an herbalist of some sort even if it wasn’t a traditional dwarven hobby or occupation. For goddess’ sake, the man walked around strange forests collecting strange fruits to cook with. Of course he had some way to determine if a found food would be edible or not.

Seeing that he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, Kali began walking around the perimeter of the room and tapping against the wall with the pommel of her dagger. She’d been read plenty of fairy tales growing up and all dungeons had one thing in common, hidden treasure. She was determined to find it if it existed there, she knew hiring investigators to find her dad would be expensive judging by how much the man had spent on a similar endeavor to find her mother when she was young.

After a couple rounds around the room, she walked back over toward the rest of her party. Issac hadn’t moved from his stoic pose in front of the mushroom patch but Marcello was now shadow boxing the air. Even as she approached him, Kali wondered what his fighting style was called. It didn’t look quite like anything she’d seen before, full of strange jerking motions and smooth movements blended together. Perhaps she was onto something and he really was just a homeless man, hoping to earn money in the dungeon with no real fighting experience. Were it not for his ‘love’ of the dwarf’s stew, there was no way he would have joined their party even if he was a nice enough guy.

“Yup,” Kali flinched as Issac broke the silence abruptly.

“Is it edible then?” Marcello asked.

“How would I know, do I look like an expert in fungiculture? Looks tasty enough though and meaty enough to make a good substitute for the hedgehog in my stew. Gonna grab a few of these while we are in here.”

The dwarf reached forward to grab the mushroom, wrapping his hands around the stalk below it, likely attempting to avoid smashing the misshapen pale mushroom cap above it. After getting his hand wrapped solidly around the mushroom, he pulled… and pulled.

“Well, isn’t this strange.” The dwarf kept yanking, throwing his whole body weight in the pull over and over. “Damn thing is stuck and I can’t even let go of it, it's so damn sticky.”

Thats when the spiders started crawling out from under the mushroom caps and all hell broke loose.