There wasn’t much of a line to enter the dungeon in the subterranean hall that contained the entrances, where Kay and the first expedition had popped out of after their run through the dungeon to escape the ancients. There was a small gathering of adventurers waiting for their chance who looked over as Kay and his escort came down the steps. A few people started whispering to each other, but no one approached, and the few adventurers with mutinous looks calmed down once they traveled past the queue. No one liked people who cut in line, but Kay wasn’t there for the dungeon yet.

The underground hallway had obviously been cleaned up, with piles of rubble taken away and holes in the masonry repaired. From what Kay could see, the people who’d fixed things up had either reused the broken pieces or sourced similar materials because a majority of the repairs looked immaculate. A number of mosaics, carvings, and other artistic features had been restored to a form that Kay had to assume was accurate. There was a roped-off area with a single guard farther down the hallway, beyond which the area looked less like a preserved historical site and more like the original ruin they’d discovered. There was a small team of workers who were busy turning the hall from one to the other.

A thin, elven man was very carefully rubbing a piece of paper against the wall in one section and glanced over as a contingent of people moved into the blocked-off area. His gaze darted from Meten to Kay, and he grinned. Cautiously, he pulled back the paper and checked the rubbing he’d made before setting it down and walking toward them. He stopped to tap a woman on the shoulder and waved at a beastkin man farther down the hall. The woman, also an elf, looked up in confusion, and the first man leaned down to whisper to her while the beastkin jogged over. Together with the beastkin man in the lead, they headed directly for Kay. As a group, they stopped a short distance from Kay and gave small half-bows, which was the least amount of public deference Kay could get people to accept.

“Greetings, my lord,” The shorter, squat beastkin man had pointed ears that swiveled in place to face different directions as he spoke, “Welcome to Vibrant and our little archaeological and historical endeavor. I’m Bertram Nightdancer, an archaeologist and technically the leader of this undertaking. With me are my colleagues and, in my opinion, my co-leads, Efron Cleavings, who is a historian, and Marian of Domewell, a dungeon researcher.”

“Hello. You already know, but I’m Kay. Meten tells me you have a discovery or two to share with me.”

“Oh, we have more than one,” the thing elven man, Efron, replied with a wide grin, “But unless you’re interested in listening to Bertram and I going over a lot of historical information that doesn’t really do anything concrete for anyone, you’ll mostly be interested in one thing. We’re pretty sure we know how to open the next of the dungeons.” He nudged Marian with his elbow. She blushed and looked away.

Bertram rolled his eyes behind his round glasses, “Stop bragging, please, Efron; we know you love to blather on about things you’ve found.”

“I just said he shouldn’t sit here and listen to us.”

“Stop trying to use reverse psychology on our boss’ boss and ruler of our city, please.”

“How much history is it?” Kay asked, cutting through the friendly bickering of two people who knew each other well.

“Oh, quite a lot.” Bertram reached back and swatted Efron’s chest before he could speak. “A significant portion was already known or hypothesized information, but these ruins and some of the carvings and mosaics we’ve been finding have been either affirming things or bringing up pieces of information that fill in some of the holes we’ve had for some time.”

“How about you give me the necessary background to understand the why and what of opening these dungeons, and we can leave the rest of what you know as a ‘maybe’.”

“Of course!” Bertram led them toward the guarded rope that cordoned off the section they were in, “Let’s start over at the first plaque.”

“Bert, how about the background first while we’re over here so we don’t disturb the adventurers too much?” Marian said quietly, grabbing and tugging at Bertram’s sleeve. When Kay turned to look at her, she blushed and glanced away.

“Oh, good point! Less fuss if we do it in that order, good thought.” He stopped and looked up at Kay, “So, I’m aware you’re an Outworlder, most people are at this point; how’s your grasp of Torotian history?”

“Poor.”

“As I thought. I won’t make you listen to every little detail, but do you know that we’re currently on an upswing after a descent into a historical dark period?”

“That’s been explained to me.”

“Wonderful! That’s really the only difficult thing to get people to understand. Roughly one thousand to seven hundred years ago, things were going fantastically for the civilizations on this continent. The other continents weren’t doing terribly, but it was quite a golden age here on the central one. Then, as it tends to happen, there was a crash. An unknown disaster located in this region wiped out several nations and sent several others into downward spirals. We don’t know what happened to cause it, but the resulting refugee crisis as huge numbers of people fled to what they hoped were safer regions, plus the sudden resource shortages as jobs and businesses were lost, started a chain of events that led to all of the major civilizations of that period collapsing. There were wars, tragedies, a few recorded atrocities, and other distant effects spawned by the original event that led to the collapse of several nations. Including one that had a city right where we stand!”

“The people that lived here were called the Hectrazi,” Efron took over the explanation, “They were a primarily elven society that controlled a large portion of the southern part of this region. My family is actually descended from several refugees from the Hectrazi nation, which is why I ended up specializing in their history. Now, what we’ve discovered here hasn’t shed too much light on what disaster befell the region and destroyed everything, but we now know that it wasn’t a fast destruction. Someone had enough time to come down here and seal the dungeons somehow, then carve messages into stone about how to reopen everything.”

“That could be done quickly with magic,” Meten pointed out.

“Sure, but if people are dying right this instant and everything’s gone to shit in seconds, you don’t think about closing things up to make sure whoever’s here stays safe from the dungeons, and you don’t leave messages on how to open the locks if you don’t think someone’s going to come by, read the message, and want to open things up.”

“Language, Efron!” Bertram snapped.

“Sorry,” He smirked at Kay from behind Bertram’s much shorter back. “Anyway, the Hectrazi language is… Well, I’ve been told that you read a passage describing the dungeons when you first arrived on this side, yes?”

“Yeah,” Kay turned and pointed over his shoulder, “There was a metal plaque hanging up close-ish to the where the stairs down got rebuilt.”

“Right, there was. We’ve removed several of them for repair and restoration and also to keep bored adventurers from fucking with them.” Bertram shot the grinning elven man a glare, which he ignored. “That plaque described that the largest dungeon here,” He turned and pointed at the double doors farther down the hall, which were also roped off and guarded, “It was called the Tumultuous Hall, that it was dangerous, and it had ‘spawned’ two other dungeons as preparatory dungeons to train in, right? The Many Trial Rooms, which is back there and is the open one, and the Caustic Depths,” He pointed to the left down a sloping hallway that was still covered in rubble, “Which is still closed. Pretty simple and useful information, right?”

“I mean, yes, but I feel like you’re leading me somewhere with this.” Kay replied suspiciously.”

“I totally am. That plague was absolutely and totally written by a foreigner. There is no chance someone who was Hectrazi wrote that. They were the most convoluted, poetry-obsessed weirdos there have ever been.”

“Efron,” Bertram sighed.

“They’re my ancestors; I can call it like I see it. And I’m right.” He walked over to a small tale and grabbed a piece of paper. “This is what the plaque that described how to open the Many Trial Rooms says: ‘Bring not the hero of Evantua’s journey to this site where many sleeping minds have been awoken. Bring only that which marks one as a prisoner of the layered shell, and offer it up so that you may step from dreams into truth’.”

“… What?”

“Bleed near one of the two doors of the Many Trial Rooms to open them.”

“What?”

“Right? That’s a normal instruction for the Hectrazi language; it makes no sense from a logical perspective and makes at least two literary references that you have to get to understand what you’re supposed to do. My ancestors were weird. Thankfully, we have Marian with us, though, and her knowledge of dungeons, combined with my understanding of my ancestor’s history and culture, has let us figure out how to unlock the next dungeon. Specifically the Caustic Depths.”

Efron pushed Marian forward with a hand on her back, but she shrank away while shaking her head, her eyes darting to Kay multiple times.

“Sorry,” Bertram reached out and patted her on the hand, “She gets nervous in front of new people, especially new people that double as important leaders. You keep going, Efron.”

“Of course.” He smiled at Marian, not unkindly, and kept talking, “Skipping over the ostentatious language used to describe it all, if we take some loot from the Many Trial Rooms and burn it in front of the doors to the Caustic Depths, it’ll open up. My interpretation of the writings we found suggests we need to burn particularly colorful and valuable loot.”

Meten looked both confused and intrigued, “Why the specifics?”

“Dungeons are alive,” That whispered response came from Marian, who was standing half-hidden behind Efron, “There’s no agreement on if they’re intelligent, but they are definitely alive.” She opened her mouth to continue, and then her gaze met Kay’s. A deep blush rushed up to cover her face, and she jerked her head down, hiding farther behind her colleague.

Efron continued as if the sudden refusal to talk was perfectly ordinary, “If I’m wrong and the things I’ve read are just embellishments, burning the loot is probably a sign to whatever magic was used to seal up the dungeons that the Many Trial Rooms isn’t a challenge anymore since you both have the loot and can afford to burn it. If I’m right, and I’m one of the people who think dungeons are intelligent, then a lot of the scraps of writing we’ve found down here say that the ‘lesser’ dungeons are siblings, born from the big one, and they’re not a happy family. I even found scraps of a play about how the Caustic Depths got really pissed at the Many Trial Rooms and swore an oath to get vengeance somehow.”

“I don’t really know what to do with that specific information, but running a dungeon a few times and getting some loot to burn sounds like a plan. What about the other dungeons? How do we open those?”

“We’re still working on that.” The three researchers shared a look, “What we have so far isn’t… the most interesting, to be honest. But we’ll get there eventually!”

“Okay, keep up the good work. For now, I think I’ll plan things out with Meten to get some loot gathered.”

They shared some goodbyes with the researchers and walked off. As they walked, Meten leaned in close.

“You’re thinking about doing the runs yourself to get more practice with the new Class and work on getting Classes back, right? I was assuming you’d do some runs while you were here, at minimum. Do you mind if I add some people to your party?”

“Who were you thinking of?”

“Well, besides some Sentinels that I think would do well, I finally bullied that giant nephew of mine to come down here and get some more combat experience under his belt.””