[The alarm went off, it was 6 AM. Jason was ready to get to work around the farm. He had 39 starting actions]

[Tess’s Almanac: 35th day of Fall! 56 days until the Fall Festival. Today is the last day to submit your application to Constable Hank if you’ve not already done so! Other than that, today should be a pretty quiet day]

Jason smiled as he rolled out of bed and rose to his feet. A quiet day, indeed. He sighed deeply in contentment, then walked to his window and gazed out across his farms. His torches were still smoking, walling off the ripened sorghum. Ordinarily, he would have gone ahead and harvested on that day, but a rainstorm the day before had made the field far too wet to enter with his equipment. As such, after sending a few letters back and forth with Tess, they had arranged a bit of a date.

He dressed quickly and made his way downstairs. To his delight, he had actually beaten Tess, and set out an array of the greenest food he could find, though he did intersperse it with a good deal of bacon, sausage, and eggs. He had only just sat down when Tess slipped into the kitchen, a smile on her face.

“Sorry I’m late! Had to sort out a few things with Constable Hank before I could get away from town.”

“Important things?” Jason raised an eyebrow.

“Nothing terrible. He does need to meet with the two of us to discuss some of the wedding plans, but I think he still wants to wait for the time being.” Tess frowned, then shrugged. “There’s also been some discussion regarding boundaries, as far as Daniel is concerned. He’s not really accustomed to being in a town like Summer Shandy. There are tens of thousands of dungeons around the world, and most of them are a lot larger than ours. He’s bored out of his skull, and bored warriors are rarely a good thing to have hanging around.”

“I can only imagine.” Jason grimaced.

“How have things been around here?” Tess asked. “You’ve gotten two harvests out of the field since I introduced you to Daniel, right?”

“One.” Jason corrected. He grimaced. “I harvested the first field and got a half-decent yield. It all looked good, but more of the bugs had been able to slip through the smoke than I had realized, and about half the crop had been eaten. I replanted, and then…” He chuckled and shook his head softly. “A few days after planting, I needed some supplies, and I was fairly tired, so I rode into town without refilling the torches. That was the day I saw you for a few seconds?”

Tess nodded. “You looked like you were in a hurry, but I was busy with some meetings, so I didn’t have time to ask.”

Jason nodded. “I remembered the torches while I was checking out at Paulina’s store. By the time I got home, the Juun bugs had eaten just about everything. I just plowed everything else under, then replanted, and… So far, I’ve managed to keep it alive.”

“I’m glad.” Tess sighed with a smile, then shrugged. “So, what’s the plan for today? You said you had a secret for me?”

“I do.” Jason finished eating and rose. “Help me refill the torches, and we’ll be off!”

Tess frowned, but nodded. The next forty-five minutes were filled with what was by far the nastiest job on the farm, but it passed quickly enough with the two of them working together. As they finished, Jason walked out to their horses, then mounted up on Lady. Tess hopped up onto Angus, and off they went.

A smile crept across his face as he took Tess off past the field and out into the prairie, winding toward his distant patch of land. She rode up next to him, smiling broadly as well.

“You’re taking me out to the old dungeon!” She grinned broadly. “Oh, Jason, I’ve been looking forward to this!”

“I have to admit, I am, too.” He chuckled. “I’m still not sure what you’re going to find inside, but I’ll admit to wondering more than a little bit about what the inside of a dungeon looks like.”

“This is so exciting!” She beamed. “You get to show me your work, but I’ve never been able to do the same. This is going to be epic!”

Jason just nodded and smiled as they rode on across the hills. Soon enough, they popped over the last hill and came into view of the massive expanse of dead grass. It was hard to tell if the land was recovering yet, largely because the Juun bugs were still eating everything this far over as well. He did his best not to think about it, and simply rode up to the edge of the trees. There, Tess dismounted and hitched Angus to a large tree branch, and Jason did the same. She then turned and looked at him, and made a sweeping gesture with her hand.

“After you, my liege.”

Jason chuckled, then started off into the forest. This time, it took him only a few minutes to locate the monolith, as he was starting to remember the path. He and Tess walked into the clearing in front of the immense object, and Tess tilted her head back and whistled.

“Wow. I’ve heard about these things, but I’ve never seen one before.”

“What are they? Is it?” Jason glanced at her. “I’ve been scratching my head up one side and down the other, but I just can’t figure it.”

“It’s a dungeon marker.” Tess answered. “Back in ye olden days, before the land was really colonized, the dungeons would have these huge markers outside of them to let people know where to look. Warriors could see them for miles off, it helped navigate.” She gestured at the faded writing. “At least from what I’ve been told, no one ever really managed to translate the old writing, and I think most people just assumed it was gibberish to try to draw in curious warriors, but there were a handful who believed the markings indicated what sorts of monsters lay in the dungeons. You still see that script in modern dungeons sometimes, scattered here and there around doorways and on crypts and such.”

Jason frowned and nodded slowly. “Wow. How do you know all that?”

Tess shrugged. “History enthusiasts who come through the Guild Hall. I met a few of them growing up, but since I became Guildmaster, there are always a few historians per year who come through to ask me all sorts of questions about the history of Summer Shandy, or to check out the new dungeon and examine how it’s different from older ones. Some of them are professors who enjoy a good adventure, and some of them are warriors who enjoy a bit of history. I’ve picked up a decent bit listening to them ramble, though I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always pay the best attention.” She puffed out her cheeks and sighed. “When you’re sitting between a warrior telling the story of how he bested an ice dragon using a single saber-cat tooth, and a historian telling you about the different historical drop rates of wildflowers inside various dungeons, it’s easy to see which one you might pick.”

Jason just chuckled softly. “I think I would have the same difficulty, though in the reverse direction.” He sighed, then shrugged. “Well, that confirms that this is definitely an old dungeon. Come on, the entrance is over here.”

Jason quickly led Tess over to the old oak tree, where the small cave was still present beneath the gnarled roots. The floor of the cave was back, though, and Jason sighed.

“Oh, no! Everything must have filled itself in. We’d have to dig to get in, now.”

Tess just chuckled and shook her head. “Come on! I think I know what’s happening.”

She strode down into the bottom of the cave, and stood there on the soft soil for a few moments. Suddenly, the ground gave way, and she tumbled into the darkness. Jason yelped and slid down the slope, only to find her at the bottom grinning broadly.

“It’s a trap entrance. You really don’t see that sort of thing nowadays. Way too much liability, or so I’m told. It’ll stay open until we leave the dungeon, and then will close up as we walk away. Come on, let’s take a look around!”

Tess reached into her inventory and took out a torch, which she quickly lit. In the flickering light, Jason could see that the tunnel extended about a hundred feet in both directions, coming to T-intersections in both cases. Tess began to walk forward, lighting the candles in the small alcoves as she went.

“Oh, Jason, this is incredible!” She whispered softly. Jason stayed close behind her as they walked over the bones of dead monsters. They came to the first room, and Tess held the torch inside. Jason glanced around the doorframe, where he found several chains hanging from the wall, and scattered bones and such around the floor. A treasure chest sat at the far end, and his heart gave a leap. “Go open it!”

Jason frowned, but nodded. He trusted Tess, and trusted her sword if anything went wrong. He quickly walked across the floor, grabbed the lid of the chest, and pulled upward. There was a great rusty squeal, and he revealed the inside of the box. Empty. He sighed a bit in disappointment, then walked back to Tess. They soon walked to the next room, which had an almost-identical setup. Room after room proved to be exactly the same, and they came to the end of the hall without anything terribly exciting happening. Jason’s nerves were beginning to calm down, but more than that, he actually found himself a bit disappointed at what he was seeing.

“This is incredible.” Tess whispered for what must have been the hundredth time. They turned a corner at the end of the hall and started walking down a side corridor, far out of view of the light from the tunnel exit now.

“I have to say, I’m a little underwhelmed.” Jason remarked.

“First of all, this would be a lot more exciting if there were hordes of monsters charging at you.” Tess remarked. “Secondly, this is a historical find. Modern dungeons are a lot different. Older dungeons, I’ve been in one or two that are similar to this, are super blocky, have very little variation from one room to the next, and look a lot more like actual dungeons that you might keep prisoners inside. They typically had one or two treasure chests per room, a few hidden chests, and a boss room on every floor. Ooh! I wonder what the boss room will prove to be?”

She started to walk a bit faster, and Jason hurried to keep up.

“How deep did they go?” He asked as they moved along. “The one in Summer Shandy has five floors, right?”

Tess nodded. “Older dungeons had a lot more floors, but as you can see, they were also a lot more plain. Five to ten floors is pretty common for low to mid-level dungeons today, but back when this dungeon was built, you couldn’t have had less than a dozen floors and been called a dungeon at all. I think the average was somewhere around fifty, with some of them having close to two hundred. Again, all of this is secondhand information, so take it with a grain of salt.” She whistled softly. “Those old-time warriors were tough, I’ll give you that. Even my brother would have had a hard time keeping up with a lot of them, from what I’ve heard. Ooh, here!”

Tess’s torch illuminated a large archway, and they rushed out into a much more open room. The ceiling rose a bit higher than the surrounding tunnels, but not by much. Large, square columns rose from the floor to hold up the ceiling, while various obstacles lay scattered here and there. Broken statues, a few lava pools that had since cooled into obsidian, that sort of thing. Near the far side, a gaping pit seemed to open like a great mouth into the depths of the earth. Tess hurried forward, unconcerned by the husk of a giant spider, twenty feet long, that lay next to it.

“Here you are, Jason.” She stepped up to the edge of the hole. A ladder led down one side, though in Jason’s estimation, based on the five-foot-tall mushrooms that were growing down below, the ladder was mostly used for getting up rather than down. “The next floor! Want to come look?”

Jason shuddered, then sighed and shrugged. “You know what? Why not?”

“Yay!” Tess leapt down into the abyss, bounced off a mushroom, and motioned for him to follow. He took a deep breath, grimaced, and leapt forth.

The two of them spent the rest of the day in the dungeon, not emerging until the sun was setting in the sky. They made it down four levels, all of which were nearly identical, until the came to a place where the tunnels started to collapse. They did manage to find the portal down to floor five, but the hole only dropped down a dozen feet before coming to solid rock. It was a disappointment for both of them, but they shrugged it off and started back up, looking through as many of the treasure chests as they could find. Tess found an old dragon’s tooth in a hidden boss lair she discovered, and Jason found a glittering diamond in one of the treasure chests, though he managed to pocket it before Tess noticed. He didn’t know exactly what he could do with it, but he fully intended to surprise her with it at a later date.

And, with that, one of the best days Jason had experienced since his engagement came to a close. He and Tess walked out into the sunset and embraced, and Tess sighed deeply.

“Thank you for this, Jason.” She glanced over in the direction of his farmstead. “I had a lot of fun today, and I hope you know that.”

“I did, too.” Jason nodded. “It was nice to see what you do. Or at least what your far-superior ancestors once did.”

At that, Tess chuckled. “Good luck with your farm. I really do hope you get the Juun bug problem figured out soon. That stuff is… Nasty.”

“You’re telling me.” Jason muttered, then waved and climbed up onto Lady’s back. “See you around.”

“I love you!” Tess called as she started to ride away, taking a path cross-country back toward Summer Shandy.

“I love you, too!” Jason called back. He started off toward his farmstead, a warm glow in his heart. Sure, things were tough, but as long as he had Tess, he couldn’t imagine that they could ever get too terrible.