With a resounding boom, the doors closed, engulfing them in the not quite darkness of the dungeon. For a moment, they stood still, waiting for their eyes to acclimatize to the lighting provided by the torches. The moment it did, Rowan pointed forward.

“There’s no time to waste. Let’s move.”

The party followed his orders, slipping into the swallow’s tail formation as they trotted forward. Although everyone wanted to hurry, Rowan forced himself to move at a low jog. There was no telling what the professors had prepared for them in here, and until they found out, he did not want to be overly hasty. Injuries born from lack of caution would cost them more time than a few minutes of taking it slow.

The dungeon before them was fairly standard in construction, at least to Rowan’s experienced eyes. Stretched out before them was a tunnel hewn in the rock, about twenty feet wide and ten feet tall. Torches of blue crystal flickered in small sconces on the walls, providing dim but stable lighting that did not flicker or dissipate. Ahead, the tunnel curved to the left, moving out of sight as it led them away from the entrance.

The turn in the passage did not conceal enemies, but the next turn did. As they came around the bend, eight thimps, their visages ugly, turned to look at them, alerted by the sound of Droon’s shield glancing off the rocky wall beside him.

With a grimace, Droon turned to apologize, but Rowan frantically motioned for him to shut up. The thimps were charging, and the party needed to get into position to meet them, now.

Fortunately, neither Reinne nor Morgana needed any prodding as they sprang into action. As the thimps rushed towards Droon, his stance still unsteady as he leveled his shield at the charging monsters, the two slayers rushed forward.

Reinne’s sword cut a beautiful arc, beheading the lead thimp and twirling past it to engage the second. As her first victim fell, it acted as a roadblock for those behind it, forced to either jump over the body of their former companion or go around into the waiting blade of Reinne.

Two chose to jump, while another went right, angling towards Reinne who met it with a deadly look and a deadlier thrust, her blade a silvery flash as she immediately made the thimp regret its decision to take her as its opponent.

Meanwhile, Morgana moved to the left of Droon’s position, getting clear of the rest of the party as she raised her hands toward the mass of thimps. On her right index finger, a silvery ring lit up, green light surrounding it as enormous vines burst forth from her fingertips, entangling the four thimps in the rear and bringing them to a painful halt upon the thorny vines.

Not wanting to be outdone, Rowan took up his own position, supporting Droon’s exposed flank as the two remaining thimps charged past Reinne’s position. With a shout, the first thimp slammed its club into Droon’s shield, leaving a small dent in the wood.

Droon grunted, but did not budge, instead slamming his shield into the face of the offending foe. Taken by surprise, the thimp’s nose crunched wetly as it broke, spilling it to the ground in a daze.

The other thimp attempted to take advantage of the opening Droon had provided, but a quick spell from Rowan caused it to yelp in pain and turn towards him with eyes filled with hate. A short exchange later, and Rowan’s shortsword found its neck, stabbing through skin, veins, and bone in a spray of arterial blood.

With that, the fight was finished. Droon had finished off his own opponent, while Reinne and Morgana had taken care of the other six enemies between themselves, the thimp’s remains marred by sword marks, thorn holes and the dented cavities left by Morgana’s stone spheres.

Not wasting time processing the thimp bodies, the party hurried on. In a normal dungeon, Rowan would have chopped off the thimp’s horns to sell back at the academy. However, this was no normal dungeon, and time was paramount. The few silvers they would have made selling the thimp horns were nothing compared to the decline in grades they would face if they stopped to process every enemy they killed.

As they moved, Rowan analyzed their fight. The fact that they were fighting thimps in this dungeon reassured him, as he found thimps much easier to fight than certain other monsters encountered within brass-tier dungeons. If this dungeon’s defenders were comprised entirely of thimps, nothing would make him happier.

More importantly, they had fought together as a party for the first time, and had done so brilliantly. Despite his concerns, everyone had played their parts perfectly. Not a single thimp had broken through their defenses, and they had managed to remain unscathed following the first encounter.

They were off to a good start.

Two more battles went by smoothly, with both Droon and Rowan stepping up to take a little of the load off of the slayers. The thimps were numerous, but not overly dangerous so long as their formation remained intact. With Morgana’s magic helping to keep a good number of any attackers at bay, keeping the formation together had not proved dangerous, and the thimps naturally fell beneath blades of thorn and steel.

Watching Morgana cast her magic, Rowan felt a twinge of jealousy. The sword in his hands was dripping with thimp blood, but he yearned to do what his party mate did, using the arcane to dominate the battlefield. Unfortunately, with his current capabilities, the best that he could manage was to augment his prowess through minor spells and his survivability with Darm’s shield spell. He could not yet rely purely on magic as Morgana was doing.

Impressive as the fae girl’s abilities were, even more impressive was the speed at which they blitzed through the battles. Even in all his experiences as a porter, Rowan would have been hard pressed to name any parties who could match the sheer offensive prowess that Morgana and Reinne displayed.

The Frost Blades for one, and perhaps the Jackal Claws as another, much as he hated to admit it. Given that every other party he had been a part of had been five members strong, this was quite the achievement, and Rowan was careful to temper his excitement as he commanded his party members to remain vigilant. The tides of battle could be turned in an instant, and he did not want to be the only party today to have lost a member.

Despite Rowan’s warnings, nothing out of the ordinary occurred, and the thimps opposing them were smoothly killed. Taking only a moment to survey the corpses, Rowan plunged his blade into the back of one thimp who was merely pretending to be dead. With a loud scream, the thimp grew still, its death no longer merely feigned.

Satisfied that the rest were truly dead and would not be rising like wraiths to fall upon them from behind, Rowan motioned the party forward, reforming the formation as they moved into the passageway ahead.

Just before they could enter, however, something tugged at Rowan’s vision from the left of the passage. There, at the bottom of the wall, a small lesion in the rock could be seen, next to the corpse of a particularly large thimp.

Four months ago, Rowan’s eyes would have moved past the lesion immediately. That was before the training he had received in Rockriver’s class, and without the experience of another two dozen or so dungeons under his belt. There was something there, and his intuition screamed that it was treasure.

Commanding the party to stop for a moment and assume a defensive formation near the tunnel entrance, Rowan headed for the wall. On closer inspection, the lesion was actually a small stretch of discoloured stone, the piece of rock that had been used to block whatever lay behind not the same as the stone around it. It was subtle, but the difference was there, and Rowan had caught it.

Into his satchel Rowan went, withdrawing a small hammer and a hooked tool that he used to pry at the rock. A few sharp blows with the hammer dislodged the stone, and his hook scratched at the newly revealed lip a few times before catching hold. Carefully, Rowan pulled the hook backwards, the rock producing a scraping sound as it was pried from its hole, revealing a small cache behind it.

Within lay a small statuette of beaten gold, in the shape of a soaring bird. After taking a second to ensure there were no surprises waiting for him inside, Rowan reached into the hole and grabbed the statue, before retreating from the wall and turning to show his prize to the group.

“Is that one of the treasures?” Droon asked, his curiosity evident as he leaned forward to inspect the statue.

“Looks like it,” Rowan confirmed.

“Hmmm,” Droon deliberated as he examined the statue, taking it from Rowan for a moment on order to get a better look at it before handing it back. “It’s shaped like the bird that Turul uses for their sigil. So odds are that the remaining treasures will match the sigils of the other four houses. Not sure if that helps us, but it’s something to watch out for.”

“Could be. Nice observation, Droon,” Rowan replied.

“That’s one treasure down,” Reinne said happily as Rowan showed off the idol for their benefit. “Good job earning your keep, leader.”

“Thanks,” Rowan shot back dryly. Droon patted him on the back in congratulations, and even Morgana gave him an appraising look, the most encouragement he could hope for from her.

Stuffing the statue into his satchel, Rowan took his place at the head of the formation, occupying the lead position as they entered the tunnel. Behind him, Morgana and Droon trailed to his left and right respectively, while Reinne guarded their rear with sword drawn.

His eyes sharp, Rowan scanned the ceiling, floor, and walls, watching keenly for any sign of traps, ambushes, or potential treasure, not willing to miss a single thing that could prove beneficial for their final grade. Or detrimental to their continued existence.

It was the latter that caught Rowan’s attention, and his eyes widened as he caught it just in time.

“Careful,” Rowan cautioned, holding his arm out to bar Droon from passing. Beside him, Morgana had already naturally come to a halt, having noticed the same thing he had, and Reinne was soon to follow, poking her head up from the rear of the formation to see what the fuss was about.

“What is it?”

“Arrow trap,” Rowan explained, pointing to a series of partially concealed slits in the stone ahead of them, well hidden and camouflaged by the craggy rock in which they lay. “Let me disable it and we can pass.”

The method Rockhammer had taught the archaeologists for disabling arrow traps and other similar mechanisms was fairly simple. Taking aim at the first few arrow slits, Rowan summoned his magic, casting a spell that conjured a sticky adhesive to form on the wall in front of him. The adhesive was greyish in colour, looking rather like sun-baked cement, and it worked in much the same manner, clinging tightly to the surface where it landed.

As the adhesive settled over the holes, Rowan gave it a moment to settle before waving his hand in front of it, ready to immediately withdraw it should the adhesive fail to hold. Arrow traps were a common, but deadly form of dungeon mechanism, the missiles they shot often coated in poison or some other insidious coating.

Although the arrows rarely killed any adventurers outright unless they were struck in a particularly vulnerable spot, they were more than capable of incapacitating multiple members of a party. More advanced versions were even more dangerous, shooting missiles that were less arrows and closer to ballista bolts in size.

Although the size of the arrow slits told Rowan that this was not an advanced version of the trap, it was still more than dangerous enough to cause him worry. Without a healer, failure to properly disable it could result in a crippling injury to one of their members, and with only four members in their party, that was much more debilitating to their chances of finishing the dungeon than it was to the parties that had gone ahead of them.

With bated breath, Rowan let his hand pass in front of the first series of arrow holes, praying that he had cast the spell correctly and the adhesive would hold.

As luck would have it, it did, and his hand passed over the affected area without any arrows flying out to impale his calloused palm.

Satisfied that his spell had worked, Rowan set to plugging up the rest of the holes, the adhesive forming a grey shield that bulged slightly from the wall to their left. After a minute of this, Rowan was nearly done, though he had sealed only the holes on the bottom half of the wall. His job finished, Rowan crouched low, cautiously moving past the arrow trap to the relative safety of the passage beyond.

One by one, the rest of the party followed, similarly crouching as they passed the arrow mechanism, none of them standing until they were well clear. Had they not been on a time limit, Rowan would have sealed every hole just to be safe, but right now every second counted. Putting the trap behind them, they continued on, delving deeper within as the time ticked down.

Battle, trap, battle, trap, trap, treasure, battle, trap, trapped treasure, battle. Dealing with each challenge that presented itself, the dungeon flew by as Nightshade advanced. Despite the dazzling array of enemies and mechanisms that lay in their way, nothing could stop the four-man team, their blades and sorcery working to obliterate anything that tried. Step by step, they were conquering the dungeon, and they were doing it at a speed unmatched by any of the parties that had preceded them.

Rowan allowed himself a rare moment of elation. They could do this. They were doing this. Despite all of their troubles as a party, the top grade was theirs for the taking. All they had to do was keep it up.