The corridor curved ever so slightly around to the left. Enough that they couldn’t see more than a dozen metres ahead. They unconsciously moved to the right, leaning as they walked - trying to see further around the corner. The floor itself was tilted ever so slightly on the left-hand wall, as if thousands of feet had worn down the righthand side, or it was designed that way to guide the Delvers to the right side wall? Is that deliberate? Reinhardt snapped his eyes to the wall. Just in time to see an Enveloper, different in shape and colour to the stalactite imitators they had previously encountered, peel off of the wall to whip its tentacles and billowing ‘cape’ to wrap around Magdi’s head. A pair of tentacles tried to wrap up his arms as the Dwarf suddenly flailed about.

  “Hold still!” Otto bellowed, wicks of lightning already sparking between his fingers. Despite the danger, Reinhardt grinned. “” He circled around to the left and prepared his machete. This thing was different in shape to the others - those with elongated ‘heads’ were easy to target. This new one had a smaller, rounded, bulbous body and longer, thicker tentacles. A challenge, when that body was pressed against the head of a friend. Otto seemingly had no such reservations or concerns. He flicked out two , both hitting within a handspan - close enough that they

  “You’re only wasting air!” Otto cried as he prepared another Spell. Reinhardt charged the Dwarf, now wearing the Enveloper as quite an effective helmet. They slammed into the wall, Reinhardt cushioned by Magdi, and Magdi’s head cushioned by the creature. There was a half a heartbeat pause, then the Dwarf turned to the wall and began to headbutt the stone. The Enveloper, its main form of control suddenly turned against it, decided the juice was not worth the squeeze in this case. On the next impact, it flailed its tentacles at the wall, gripping the stone and dragging it up to the roof. There was a single ‘crack’ as a caught it square. As it locked up, Reinhardt’s thrown axe sliced into it. Not dead centre, but close enough that it hit something vital. It dropped to the floor and flopped weakly until a hammer slammed down, squishing it with a satisfying pop.

  Blood oozed out of a perfect little ring of teeth marks surrounding Magdi’s already blacked eye.

  “It looks good,” Reinhardt insisted. “It looks scary!”

  “Indeed,” Otto said. “If it scars in that clear pattern, it will be a talking point, if nothing else.”

  They looked down at the Enveloper corpse, what was left of it. Reinhardt squatted down and began to sift through the remains to find his handaxe. It was disgusting, slimy and stank like rotting meat. Reinhardt had doubts as to Otto’s assertion that there were edible beasts and flora in the Dungeon

  “Yer gettin pretty good at tossin th’axe.” Magdi said it with a note of approval. “Long tradishun o’ axe-throwwin in th’clans.” He nodded to himself.

  “Why was this one different from the others?” Reinhardt asked Otto. “Why was it on the wall?”

  “The reasons could be varied,” Otto put his hands on his hips. “Could be regional, this space of the caves has no stalactites - so no camouflage.” Reinhardt looked at the roof. There were no stalactites. How had he missed that? “Could also be a branching evolution. Maybe even a higher

  “Well, whatever the reason, I’ll be watching the walls from here on.” Reinhardt stood and gestured ahead. “We’ve been here for hours already, we need to move to reach the Castle before night.” Magdi grunted a low reply and set off, his eyes squinting through the gloom. Reinhardt took the torch from Otto and gestured for him to take the middle.

  “Be ready.” Otto nodded and brought a crackling ball into existence. His eyes were locked on the wall, trying to pick out the tell tale signs of a concealed Enveloper. The colours and shadows were different to the previous section of caves, and the walls seemed deliberately tailored to the concealment of the ambush predators. Reinhardt had the thought again, that all of this - the terrain, the irregularities of the wall, the development of an Enveloper that was perfectly adapted to this different set of circumstances - was it all by design?

  The next encounter, when they encountered it, came and went very quickly. Otto saw the variation in the reflective property between skin and stone. The locked it in place, Reinhardt sliced it open and Magdi smashed it. The hardest part was leaping to the side fast enough to avoid the spray of innards explosively becoming outards catching them. Once the routine was down however, they progressed very quickly, twisting and turning through a number of intersections. It was not long at all before they could see ‘natural’ light ahead. A pale glow of sunlight contrasting with the flickering orange light of the torch to stand out like a beacon. The boys turned a corner and entered a larger cavern, about the size of Reinhardt’s home, maybe slightly smaller. As they scanned the ‘room,’ they could see Stalactites on the ceiling, stalagmites on the floor and a large number of bats roosting among the stalactites.

  “Shame,” Otto lamented quietly.

  “Are you fond of bats?” Reinhardt asked, surprised.

  “No,” he said. “It’s just that the stalactites would break up enough to render it useless.”

  “Oh right.” Reinhardt looked up the faintly glowing eyes of the bats hiding among the crevices of the ceiling. “So what is the plan?”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “Let’s jus’ go get ‘em!” Magdi, eye blackened, hair and beard burnt and matted with blood, looked almost manic. The other two just looked at him. “They be nawt but flyin’ rats!”

  “Ok,” Otto grinned at him. “Off you go, we’ll be right behind you.”

  “I’ll be right back!” Magdi leaped up and sprinted out into the room.

  “What?” The grin on Otto’s face faltered. Reinhardt shrugged and pulled out his machete, preparing to dive in and help the frantically sprinting Dwarf. Magdi abruptly spun, just as a dozen bats broke from the ceiling and dove at the intruder. Madgi dashed back, a swarm of bats flapping after him.

  “Dáktylas and chanting the at top speed. Just as he threw his hands out in a fan, Magdi dropped and rolled into Reinhardt’s waiting arms. The cloud of flames expanded rapidly, more akin to a sphere than the usual conical swirl. It caught the bat swarm in a billowing cloud of flames and hot air. They flapped and twisted, but the sudden fire and change in wind caused them to crash into the walls, floor and ceiling. Those that were still moving, twitching and trying to claw at the air were easily dealt with by blades, Spells or boots.

  “I cannot deny the effectiveness of the tactic,” Otto said, surveying the carnage. “But some small discussion of strategy beforehand would have… smoothed out some of the… rough casting.”

  “It worked out,” Magdi shrugged and looked at the opening to the cave.

  “Yeah, what was with that Spell?” Reinhardt was using the furry bodies of the bats to wipe the worst of the blood and guts from his machete. “It didn’t act the way it normally does.”

  “Certainly not. Spellform is a complicated process.” Otto brushed ash from the front of his cassock-like robes. “Whilst the shapes the intent and the intensity, governing the mass of the Aether apportioned to the Spell and altering its nature into the appurtenant Dáktyla is what sets limits and shapes the result.” Reinhardt knew this, sort of. During Magical Theory classes it had been explained, but he had no mind for it. He just couldn’t focus on applying Aether, chanting specific phrases, all the while contorting his fingers into specific, often odd hand gestures at the same time - all in time to a specific cadence. Spellform was a finicky business - the tone and pitch of the had massive implications to the nature of the Aether applied, and the positions of the hands and fingers told the Spellform how the Spell should be shaped, directed and the point of origin. Any part being out of place, or out of “time” and the whole thing would collapse.

  “Within the Spellform, upon the third , the right hand ring finger and left hand index are what ‘shapes’ the outcome.” He held his hands up, the ring finger of his right hand curled completely and the index of his left hand straight but at a right angle to his hand. “This is what it look like. What I actually did was this.” Both fingers curled completely.

  “Making it a ?” Reinhardt asked.

  “No,” Otto frowned. “There is no Cube and . Most odd.”

  “Maybe it couldn’t determine what you wanted and tried to give you a , and all at once.” Reinhardt joked. “What does the exact position matter?”

  “No wonder you failed Magical Theory,” Otto looked aghast. “What if you set the shape as a , the orientation to ? If you held the shape for , Protrosa

  “This is why you’re the Mage, and I’m just along for the ride.” Reinhardt grinned. “Lets go for a walk through the forest.”

  The three boys stepped out of the cave and into the late afternoon sun filtering through the whispering evergreens of what was, to all appearances, the forest they trekked through to get to the Dungeon

  “It smells just like it should.” He commented.

  They stood for a good long second, just breathing in the rich air of the forest. The sky was a few shades lighter than the real sky. The sun was slightly more yellow. It was almost as if the Dungeonknew what the sky and sun was to look like, but got it ever so slightly wrong. He looked at the nearest tree. A tall conifer - some sort of pine, maybe? Botany was not his favourite subject. It had thick scaly bark and long, segmented needle foliage. It wasn’t , it was just different, like going from the north to the south of the same continent and seeing a tree from the same “family,” just not the same. The forest as a whole however, was just .

  “” Now that he was paying attention, he was noticing more and more. “” It was almost as if the ‘forest’ was made up of ‘trees’ but all the little things that made a forest alive were overlooked. Like someone had only seen a forest from afar, or only seen pictures, or had only been told “a forest is a large group of trees,” and nothing else.

  “I guess we jus’ start walkin,” Magdi looked at the sun. “Jus’ keep th’sun at 45? Or quarter it?”

  “Are you asking for directions?” Otto arched an eyebrow. “Or just asking the air?”

  “Does anythin’ change?”

  “Not really. In fact,” Otto looked around warily. “All the encounters are random. It’s theorised that the DungeonRangers

  “Has th’boar got any complaments on flavour?” Magdi rubbed his hands together eagerly.

  “Yes, actually.”

  The Dwarf took up his weapons and ‘dinged’ the heads together. Reinhardt loosened the machete in its sheath and Otto summoned a crackling ball of lightning.

  In the distance, a