Professor Thozz Grimemaw stood before the entrance of the Cruelwood Dungeon, the roots twisted around to make an arch over the muddy steps that disappeared into stygian darkness. The moon, or at least the simulacrum of a stellar object—for there were no true heavenly bodies in Arborea—shined silver light down upon the Tallwood pines of the southeast section of the Xiru Forest. Nocturnal creatures scuttled about in the weeds, grass rasping, twigs snapping. Owls hooted, their calls long and melancholy. The scent of wet vegetation, alive with summer, perfumed the air.

Thozz wished he would’ve had one more pint of ale at the Wayfarer Inn, or just one last bit of the strange soonerberry wine that the Gelatinous Knight said would put hair on his chest and color on his cheeks. Thozz doubted that very much, though, he was still curious.

After living for a thousand years at the Shadowcroft Academy for Dungeons, there was little new to try and even less that could surprise him or inspire curiosity. The soonerberry wine, was novel. Interesting. Though Thozz very much doubted it could rival the potency of Enrico Kagster’s cherry-chocolate Liverkill. As for putting hair of his chest, nothing in this world could accomplish such a task. As a Necro-Ghoul, his hair had all fallen out ages ago. All that remained was rubbery gray flesh, hollow cheeks, and deep set eyes situated above a gash-like mouth filled with too many teeth.

Thozz didn’t mind being undead—this form suited him well and offered him a chance to drink to his heart’s content, knowing he would never truly die again. Though he was far from the most powerful cultivator at the school—he couldn’t hold a candle to Shadowcroft, or even Rockheart for that matter—he’d carved a nice niche out for himself. He’d progressed to a low-ranked Jade Leaf cultivator and with the many knots he’d tied in his core, he felt a constant connection with the Tree of Souls, especially when he was near a dungeon—the sacred nodes that connected worlds to the source of all life.

Thozz adjusted his hat, covering his rubbery and wrinkled scalp. He had to be honest with himself. He wanted another flagon of ale because he was nervous about the night’s work. Nervousness was another sensation he hadn’t experienced in years beyond counting. But unlike curiosity, this feeling was not nearly so novel or enjoyable. There was no shaking it— not without gallons of wine or ale, and more was the pity, he needed a clear mind for the work ahead. Tonight, he was going to delve into the deep mysteries of Arborea, the realm that housed the most ancient of dungeon academies.

Little was known about the odd pocket dimension, seemingly unique among worlds. Where had it come from? Why did it exist? That… Well, that was the ultimate curiosity.

Thozz was going to get to the bottom of the enigma by casting a very specific spell, one that should reveal the secrets of at least the Cruelwood. There were thirteen dungeons on Arborea, and all were essential to the Academy—they were where students could practice defending the Tree of Souls, for that was the sacred task of all dungeon cores. However, through his years of study and research, Thozz had come to realize that four of the dungeons vibrated with an additional energy. The Cardinal Dungeons, he had come to call them, since they corresponded to the four cardinal directions—North, South, East, and West.

The Cruelwood was one of those dungeons. The dungeon of the west.

And so, Thozz descended down the steps, butterflies swooping in his stomach for the first time in more than five-hundred years. He held his Staff of Desiccation in gaunt, skeletal hands. His blue eyes blazed, giving him enough light.

He strode into a main entry room, its cavernous roof studded with hanging stalagmites. On a normal school day, the chamber would’ve been full of monsters, but the dungeons had been emptied for the summer, with only a skeleton crew remaining behind.

Speaking of which, moldering skeletons emerged from the earthen dungeon floor at his behest. With a thought and a flick of his wrist, Thozz sent them ahead, ready to obliterate any of the native creatures that might’ve taken up the dungeon as a den during the long summer months. He heard screams of a boss beetleoid as the skeletons hacked the thing apart.

Turning right, Thozz threaded his way down more steps. It was always thrilling, to walk the corridors, staircases, and kill rooms of a dungeon—he’d grown up reading the stories of the great dungeons of the past, and as a young elf lord on far-off Eldariana.

Thozz gave up thousands of years of life, chose a new body, chose a new name, because of his love for dungeons, and the Tree of Souls they protected.

Thozz had always had a secret obsession with dungeons, crypts, tombs, that kind of things. He’d had to keep his interests secret, of course. He’d come from a respectable elven family; they never would’ve understand his darker inclinations. Everyone knew that elves loved forests and waterfalls, and moonlit dells where they could play their lutes and sing songs about tragic love.

For one, Thozz hated freakin’ lute music. He also didn’t like harps and downright loathed the Eldarian weeping flute. As for songs, he preferred happy drinking songs rather than the dull ballads of doomed lovers, one human, the other elven, and blah, blah, blah, isn’t immortality hard? Thozz had even hated his elven name, which contained not one but three ys, a truly unreasonable number of syllables, loads of soft consonants. There were umlauts and glottal stops—marked with apostrophes—involved. Thozz consider umlauts to be unnecessary and the demonic work of arrogant linguists.

Thozz had always been a little different, and so when he’d been reaped by Shadowcroft, he’d leapt at the chance to leave behind his elven life to become a dungeon.

He’d never looked back. Not with regret, at any rate.

Seven-hundred years later, he’d found a home as an instructor, and while Yullis Rockheart could be overbearing, slightly evil, and completely heartless, Thozz wouldn’t have traded his life for anything. His love for Skip Shadowcroft, the wonderous academy, and Arborea, had led Thozz to studying the strange realm. And it was that study which had led him here, to the Cruelwood.

Thozz crossed a chasm over a root bridge, and gracelessly tromped through a muddy corridor where the walls leaked luminescent water. It was gross and perfect in equal measure. If Thozz had been designing this dungeon, he’d have included a giant white worm, blind and disgusting writhing on the ceiling overhead. He’d known a Maggot-Fiend who’d done wonderful things with exploding larvae.

Steeling his nerves, Thozz finally entered the inner sanctum. Stone columns, marked by time and filth, held up the underside of a massive tree. On a raised dais of ancient wood, with various disturbing symbols etched into each step, sat a wooden pedestal made up of polished rotes and twisting vines. The top of the dais was a circle of polished black marble, shot through with veins of red. A thing of beauty. He could feel the presence of the Tree of Souls here, even if he couldn’t see it with his pale blue eyes. But no time to relish the space, he had busines to be about.

Thozz retrieved a worn leather packet of tools from his robes and laid them out on the pedestal. Accessing the Apothos in his core, he conjured more minions, a variety of half-corpses, who crawled across the stone floor, their dragging entrails and torn clothing acting like mops to clean away the dirt and grime. In next to no time, he had a tidy workspace to conduct his business.

With surprisingly nimble fingers, Thozz unwrapped his leather work bag, admiring the glint of deadly steel tools and rune engraved artifact of power. Instead of any of those, though, he withdrew a simple piece of glowwrite chalk and began to trace out the curving arches, swooping lines, and angular symbols of his ritual.

He heard a stick break followed by a soft sigh.

He jerked his head up, blue-fire eyes blazing, his hat askew.

What was that?

He thought he was alone in the Cruelwood—other than his skeleton crew, of course, and perhaps the odd forest critter with more hunger than sense. To think there was something else skulking around made anxiety bloom into a flower of genuine uneasy. What a night of strange emotions this was turning out to be. But the uneasy was warranted—he was dealing with powerful magic.

Thozz stood, stowed the nub of chalk in his belt, and dusted of his hands. There was a rather simple solution—once he should have thought about from the get-go. All he needed to do was remove the cancerous green gemstone from his belly and let it float above the pedestal. Once connected to the sanctum, he would be able to feel every entity in the place, every last wood grub, dirt beetle, and acid-string spider.

Thozz never had a chance, though.

A shadow rose from behind a stone column. A pale hand, maybe a black weapon, maybe a rusted metal spike—Thozz couldn’t be sure and he’d never know—slammed into the Necro-Ghoul and shattered his dungeon core. There was a brief flash of pain, swift and terrible, and then darkness encroaching on every side, Thozz’s thoughts hazy and disoriented.

Before Thozz’s core knots could unraveled completely and return his cultivated Apothos to the Tree of Souls, a final thought swept though the Necro-Ghoul’s mind—he’d never have to hear another tragic love song, played by a harp/lute/flute combo, ever, ever again. That was a definite plus. Other than that? Thozz was heartbroken at the idea he wouldn’t be there, six weeks later, for the beginning of school. Teaching was his everything, and now that everything was gone. Death. Such an unfortunate bummer. But it was rather curious all the same…