Blas took a few steps back toward the acid lake and allowed his squad to move forward and take point against the insectoid monsters. His guards stayed close to his side. After a tense pause of readying themselves, two of the squad of five rangers shot off ranged attacks. The one on the left let loose an enchanted arrow from his longbow, its silver light streaking through the dim, acid-lit cavern only to land at the feet of its targets. An instant passed, and the arrow, embedded into the stone, burst outward in an explosion of frost. The ice entombed five of the unlucky bugs in thick glacier walls and coated the ground around them in a layer of slippery frost.

The second ranged attack was much, much louder.

The boom of gunpowder left ears ringing thanks to the acoustics of the cave, the flintlock rifle of the ranger smoking, a grin on his face. When flint hit gunpowder, and gunpowder hit an enchanted bullet, the result was explosive. The bullet tore through the carapace of a giant centipede and buried itself somewhere in its trunk. A second passed, and the glow of magical activation shone through the dead creature’s flesh as powder began to float from a flask on his hip, and another ball from a pouch.

This time, the group had the thought, and the reflexes, to deafen themselves with magic.

The secondary explosion of the miniature magic grenade shattered the carapace of the one it was imbedded into, as well as the frozen foes, and turned their chunks into shrapnel that pierced a dozen other bugs.

In less than fifteen seconds, fifteen of the forty were already down for the count, two were heavily injured, and the rest were scrambling in a surprised panic.

“And you guys keep telling me guns aren’t as effective as magic,” he teased.

The eye roll from his comrades was audible, and the one who shot the longbow replied, “Yeah, and I can do similar without deafening us all.”

“Guns are the way of the future! It’s not my fault you can’t see it.”

“Shut up, idiots! Let’s get this over with!” a third of the five shouted, dashing forward with a short sword in his left hand and a buckler on his right. A thick-bodied black spider jumped at him as he approached and he caught it with his shield arm. His short sword came around and stabbed into the abdomen from the side, slashing out to fling the spider’s body back at its comrades. When a centipede began to crawl overtop the body, he bashed it with the buckler, the thin spike on the front running through its head and out of the back. Lashing the body to the side, it pinned another scorpion down against the wall, which flailed in frustration.

“It’s not very proper to talk that way in front of the Duke,” said the fourth, flicking out a thin spike that flew past the third’s shield and into another spider. He grinned as he walked forward and began his own attack, flinging spike after spike at a rapid-fire pace. Once they hit their target, they began to heat up and melt, filling the wounds with liquid metal.

The fifth, the last of the rangers to attack, stayed in the back with staff at the ready. Though they didn’t seem to be doing much in particular, Blas could see they were in fact doing a lot; little things to protect the party. A magic barrier here blocking the strike of stingers and fangs, an earthen spike there to snap the legs of particularly dangerous foes without necessarily killing them, occasionally turning one of the bugs against the others to clog up a weakness in the defensive line with bodies.

Blas shared an apologetic look with his three close guards. Even the rangers didn’t respect him yet. It wasn’t like they’d chatter like this in front of their commanders. His father would have them punished.

Oh well. He was too excited to care right now, and it wasn’t like it mattered anyway. Chatter was fine with him as long as the work still got done, and this group was efficient. He wished his parents were still alive to see this. A wyvern hunt. An absolute dream come true.

And when he had this wyvern tamed, when he had it by his side, ohhh his brother would have such a shock.

Though Blas had an ax in his hand in case anything came near, nothing had the chance. Coated in the blood of bugs, the rangers finished them off with relative ease. One, the one with the short sword who usually acted as the tank, got the worst injury in the fight as he was stabbed through his armor by a scorpion’s stinger.

The ranger with the staff stepped up at that point and tapped it on the stone floor, creating a golden circle that surrounded them. With a deep chant and a call to their god, they cast a healing and detoxification spell, chastising them all the while for getting hurt.

A collection of insects and whatnot wasn’t that much of a concern, considering what was ahead of them. Blas stepped beside the healer as he worked, speaking to the group, “Thank you. You’ve done a great job so far. As far as dungeons go, this one isn’t too bad yet. But it’s still fledgling, still building itself. Since we’ve come this far and gotten a sense of what’s here, we should leave and watch for the wyvern’s return. We still don’t know what breed of wyvern it is, so it could be dangerous not to observe in detail first.”

“Yes sir,” they answered in unison. He could feel their doubt in his throat. They didn’t believe in his ability. Now that they knew for certain it was a wyvern, their eyes were full of nervous worry.

Blas and his group left the cave after killing two dozen bugs on the way out, covered in blue, grey, and greenish sticky blood. It coated the space between his fingers, trying in vain to glue them to one another, and he could feel the acidic taste in his mouth.

As the others left to wash up, Blas explained to the knights what was happening and what the plan was from here. He sent one knight off as a messenger to the nearest city and set the rest to prepare for the worst. They didn’t yet know anything about this beast, except that it was a juvenile that could use acid. He didn’t want to risk his men unnecessarily.

The knights set up for a binding ceremony nearby, erecting pillars with complex runes engraved on them, spread far enough apart to allow for a beast like a wyvern. One of the older knights set to work drawing a circle into the dirt to Blas’s specifications, making slight adjustments to fix small errors as he went.

And then, they waited.