It turned out they weren’t going anywhere yet.

The far end of the room was sealed shut by a stone gate. It was about thirteen feet tall and ten feet wide. The stone was much like the other around here - covered in a thin layer of moss-like substance - but it seemed to have some pattern cut into it.

Kaldalis couldn’t tell from here how thick the stone was, but when he put his hands against the stone, he could sense the immense weight behind it.

This wasn’t going to budge without help.

Fortunately, help seemed to be at hand, because there was a thick metal chain hanging down on the right side of the door. It was only a little rusty and made him wonder if tetanus was a thing here. The chain vanished into a metal-lined hole the wall near the top of the door, and then into a similar hole about six inches above the floor.

He took a hold of the chain and pulled. It moved easily under his hands. Flakes of rust rained down where the chain scraped against the metal ring around the hole, and there was a muffled clunking sound from inside the wall nearby.

But the stone gate didn’t move.

“Well, that’s not good.” Kaldalis frowned up at the mechanisms as if it would somehow give him an answer.

“Wait. Keep pulling,” Balrim said. “There’s something in here.” The talsar put a clawed hand to the wall, following the clunking sound when Kaldalis started again.

After a second or two, Balrim pushed against the mossy wall, and there was a deluge of crumbled green fragments of moss and detritus as a panel of stone pushed open, swinging on a hinge buried in lichen.

“What is it?” Myrin asked. “Because if it’s one of those sliding tile puzzles, I’m gonna take a nap while you deal with it.”

“It looks like we missed something,” Balrim said. He stepped aside from the open panel so that everyone could see.

Inside the panel were a number of gears and cogwheels. Despite the appearance of the chain, these seemed to be free of rust.

“This spot here and here,” Balrim said, continuing his thought. He pointed to two places where there was a metal shaft poking out of the contraption. “There looks like there are missing gears.”

Kaldalis pulled on the chain again, and sure enough, the gears on the top half of the mechanism turned, but there was a very clear point where the bottom half was separated, leaving it still.

“Ah, one of these dungeons,” Myrin said with a nod. “We needed to be finding whatchamajigs the whole walk down here. And there’s probably more doors like this farther in.”

Balrim turned towards the entrance and sighed. “I’m hoping that there are more cogs than are needed to get to the end of the dungeon. If there are extras, it might mean that there’s a treasure room as a reward for collecting them all.”

“Ooh, good point,” Myrin said, also turning towards the entrance.

“Then I guess we should get searching,” Kaldalis said, only sighing slightly. “And as cliche as this is, we should split up to cover more ground. We don’t want to leave any behind, if there’s a chance at some more sweet, sweet loot.”

“Good call. Let’s say that the DPS should backtrack to the entrance and work their way forwards,” Balrim said. “Kaldalis and I will search this room and work our way backwards.”

“Why?” Myrin asked.

“So that I can top off the tank while we search,” Balrim said, gesturing first to his left, and then pausing and motioning instead to Myrin’s left. He was gesturing to where the party HP bars were on the visual UI.

Kaldalis was, in fact, still missing some HP. He wasn’t even below 80%, but any was something if there were enemies to be found. “We’ve cleared everything, after all. If we’re splitting up anyway, it doesn’t matter how we split.”

“Good enough for me,” Myrin said, motioning to Haldir. “Let’s go. It’ll give our dads some private time, anyway.”

“Why are they-” was all Haldir managed before Myrin dragged him away.

“DPS players are weird,” Kaldalis observed.

“No arguments on that one,” Balrim said. The talsar shook his head as he produced the potion that topped Kaldalis’ health off. So much for needing time to heal him. “Let’s get to the cog search, honey.”

Kaldalis laughed. He debated throwing something at the talsar, but there wasn’t much that wouldn’t hurt on impact, so he instead went about scanning the room.

Nothing stood out to him at a cursory glance - there were no flashing spinning shapes dancing on the floor - and so he moved to the back left corner, first searching there, and then slowly working his way along the back wall, from one side to the other. When he reached the back right corner, he turned around, stepped a few feet to the side, and started back the other way.

Balrim worked his way around the walls of the room, searching for any more hidden panels.

“The dungeon experience isn’t so bad so far,” Kaldalis observed, making conversation as they hunted. “I could get used to it.”

“Yeah, I just wish there was a guide video we could watch,” Balrim said. “If we’d known we’d need these gears from the start, we’d have been searching every room like this.”

“We also would have known to burn down the firemicid first thing. Even if the guide would probably be full of terrible puns.”

“Are you kidding?” Balrim laughed. “Those would be the best part!”

“You may not lichen to see the spoilers in this guide, and if that sort of thing bugs you, it could ruin the experience,” Kaldalis said, furrowing his brow. “But if you can get in the right gear to appreciate the information within, you’ll plant your feet victoriously at the end.”

Balrim snorted. “Thank you, the experience is complete. Now I’m playing a real MMO.”

Despite his tone, Kaldalis sensed some tension in Balrim. It was some unspoken thing. But he let it go for now. They had a search to do, after all.

After a minute and a half of searching, Kaldalis found a lump in the mossy floor. He dug at it with both hands to uncover it. It was worth the effort. The cog was dirty, though as he brushed it off he found that the surface was rust-free and shining.

“Got one!” Kaldalis said in a sing-song tone.

“Woot!” Balrim shouted, walking over to check. “Where was it? If we can figure out what to look for, we can keep our eyes open going forward.”

“There was a round lump in the moss here,” Kaldalis said, pointing to the hole he’d dug out of the green carpeting the ground. “It blended in pretty well, especially with all the other rock fragments you can see making smaller bumps. We need to recognize this size more than anything else.” He held up the dirty cog for Balrim’s examination.

“Alright. It was under the moss.” Balrim nodded. “That makes sense. I did kind of think that they’d be, um, somewhere more intentional. Like in a storage closet or something. That’s why I was checking the wall.”

“It’s good thinking, and after seeing the panel in the wall for the gearbox, I think it’s a good idea to check there, too. Even if there isn’t a storage closet like that, the designer has already shown that they can make panels like that in otherwise-smooth stone.”

“And that they aren’t afraid of hiding them beneath a thick layer of moss,” Balrim said with a frown.

“I don’t know if that’s the best way of thinking about it. Don’t think about the game designer, think about the in-world builder. Someone in some ancient society constructed these rooms without the moss.”

“Sorry,” Balrim said, “I’m not the, uh, big immersion type.” He gestured around with his clawed hands. “Even though I’m a roleplayer, this is all still a game to me. Maybe that’s why I’m struggling.”

“Struggling?” Kaldalis asked with a curious tilt of his head. “How so?”

Balrim was quiet for a long moment. He seemed to be chewing on his words carefully. “Well, I don’t know what to do when a fight starts to go wrong, for one.”

“Alright, that’s a fine place to start. Say we’re fighting something and I start to die. What can you do about it?”

“At this level?” Balrim shook his head. “Not a lot.”

“Okay, so what do you have?” Kaldalis asked, trying not to let his irritation with the defeatist attitude show through. “I got my Jump ability from my spear skill, and I have a defensive cooldown from being a level five tank. What are your two abilities?”

“Well, I didn’t really get an ability for the bow.” Balrim grimaced. “Just an increase in my passive move speed. It’s not even really that noticeable.”

“No, that’s great,” Kaldalis said. “We can totally use that. Say a fight starts to go wrong and you’ve got some adds on you. Or something breaks away from me and runs at you. You can kite it. Just keep ahead of it and you can focus on throwing out healing on the run.”

“Oh, yeah.” Balrim started to nod, first slowly, and then with a little bit more confidence. “Alright, yeah. That sounds good. That’s kind of what I was trying that first time, but you told me to stay put so that you could get to me. Since I passively move faster than you, it made sense not to run away and make you work harder.”

“Yeah, well… You still shouldn’t run away. Instead you can, um, circle the group,” Kaldalis clarified, gesturing with his hands. “If you run straight away from me, I’ll never catch up to help you. But if we’re here-” he held up three fingers on one hand- “and you run like this-” he held one finger of his other hand out, tracing an elliptical orbit around the first hand- “then you’re never out of range of giving me heals, and when you pass close by me here-” he wiggled one of the fingers on the center hand as the orbiting hand went by- “then I can turn around and smack whatever’s chasing you. Maybe it’s not enough to get its full attention, or maybe I can’t swipe at it every time, depending on what else is in the fight, but you keep ahead of the monsters chasing you, but don’t end up all the way back at camp before the encounter is over.”

“That’s smart,” Balrim said with a thin, raspy chuckle. “I wish I’d thought of that.”

“We’re all learning, right?” Kaldalis clapped Balrim on the shoulder with a smile. “We’re all getting there together. I lean on you, and you lean on me. That’s how team party dads work, alright?”

Balrim snorted. “Can you not call us party dads? I’m sorry if you misunderstood me fucking with you back on the boat, but you’re not my type.”

“Pft,” Kaldalis said indignantly, but with a smile a mile wide. “And what’s your type if not strong-jawed and indigo?” He tossed his head as if he had long hair to flip indignantly.

“Mmm, I like huge…” Balrim held his clawed hands up in front of his chest. “Tracts of land?”

“You picked the wrong race for that, brother.” Kaldalis laughed, hard. “Lizards don’t nurse their young. No nursing means no nips. No nips means no…”

“I know!” Balrim crossed his arms with a huff. “But the worldbuilding is super inconsistent. Female talsar have no boobs, which sure, is realistic, but female bhogad only have two instead of twelve.”

“Wow,” Kaldalis interrupted. “Okay, before Myrin comes back in and finds us only halfway through this room but standing here talking about twelve-titted women, we should get back to the search.” Kaldalis turned his attention back to the floor. “But when we’re less busy, we should talk some more about that. I’m sure it’d be a real crowd pleaser.”

“Ugh,” Balrim groaned. “Don’t get me started on that.”

“What about?”

“The streaming,” Balrim said, slumping his shoulders even as he turned to go back to his own part of the search of the room. “I haven’t seen anything yet. I’m afraid I might not be attracting viewers.”

“Rewards aren’t out yet. The first shipment or whatever is supposed to be at the end of this week.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, I have, uh, a friend on the outside. She told me two days ago. I don’t know what day it is in the real world now, but I’ll let you know when I see anything. She also teased that I was getting at least some support, so I should be able to confirm what day it comes through.”

“Thanks,” Balrim said, though he still wore a grimace. “It’s just… well, Myrin and I made success there kind of our goal. It’s hard not to be getting any feedback on that front. The stream has been running for three weeks, I thought we’d see something by now.”

“Don’t worry,” Kaldalis said. “I’ve got your back. If I’m getting some support...” He trailed off and turned his head to look upwards before he announced loudly: “Anyone supporting me should support my friends, too.”

“Then I guess I better stay friends with the great and powerful Kaldalis,” Balrim said with a sarcastic laugh.

“Hey, if you can keep up with me, you can ride my coattails anywhere,” Kaldalis said, putting on a goofy grin to show he wasn’t entirely serious. “So, raincheck on the talk about twelve-titted women. Dungeon progress now.”

“Business first,” Balrim agreed, “pleasure later.”