Mirgia nodded. “How did you get here, Kimi?”The feeling of joy and togetherness slowly faded and Mirgia was now left with an empty sadness instead. Things had been so incredibly peaceful. He was here among friends, dancing, eating, drinking and having a good time. Then a high pitched noise rang through his ears and suddenly all of that splendor and beauty was gone and instead he stood here, hands still on the shoulder and hip of his dance partner as a tear fell down his face. He looked up to be faced with a monstrous visage. The person he thought he was happily dancing with was already decaying rapidly and had been dead for weeks. He pushed her away and scrambled backwards on the floor, bumping into something and letting out a yelp before looking up. He looked right at a stranger with a wicked grin on his face. The stranger reached out to Mirgia as if to strangle him but Mirgia was faster, jumping back with the reflexes he’d honed his entire life before brandishing a knife. He was about to pounce on the stranger when a voice commanded him to stop.
“Mirgia, it’s alright. All of you, it’s alright now.” Mirgia calmed down after the voice forced him to take a deep breath. It was a familiar voice of someone that he didn’t think could be here. He looked up to see his friend, Kimi’Thania, smiling at him.
“Kimi, what happened, why are you here?” He looked back at the stranger he was just about to attack and realized that it was no dangerous person but instead a friendly priest of Owlana. “What is going on here?”
“Calm down and let’s first make sure all of your friends here have their wits about them. Some of them seem to be malnourished to the extreme while others still need to process what just happened to them.” The priest put his hand on Mirgia’s shoulder. “Sit, you still haven’t fully adjusted to being back to your wits yet.”
Mirgia wanted to argue, but he knew the priest was right. He sat down and took in his surroundings. All of his party members were here, including Jom and Doroly who had run off. The priest that spoke with him and Kimi were accompanied by another seven priests. Outside of those two groups, another nine people were present in the room, all in various stages of getting out of the daze they had just been in. Mirgia recognized the two women he’d spoken with in the Big green house but he did not recognize the other seven. Two of these seven seemed to be doing quite poorly as two of the priests were attending their wounds and carefully giving them some water and food so they wouldn’t choke on it. “I was caught in a trap,” Mirgia said.
Kimi nodded. “This trap had several layers to it, including one that made you think you’d bypassed it successfully without this being true. Even as someone who has studied this type of magic my entire life, I wasn’t certain I could counteract it. I’m happy that I could though, because those two over there probably wouldn’t have lasted until the end of the day.” She didn’t add what would happen to them, but the spread of bodies in this room gave Mirgia enough of a clue. He shook his head. “What a mess. He got up and walked over to the others from his party. Roal and Sereh seemed to be doing alright but Quint was really spooked by what had happened to them. Lym was with his brother, who seemed to have hurt his ankle in some way and was having trouble walking. Doroly walked over to them and slapped Mirgia on his back. “Glad you had some capable friends nearby, right?”
“Same way you got here, presumably.” Her face darkened. “During that raid, someone pushed me and then I was sent here by a strange magic circle. Unfortunately I couldn’t see who pushed me, so I don’t know if it was one of the people from that pirate’s crew or someone else.”
“That is concerning. But I think we have to focus on the current situation first and talk about this later.”
Kimi agreed.
“There are too many of us to be an efficient group of dungeon divers.” Salandi said. She was one of the two women who Mirgia spoke to in the big green house. Her and her partner Fezel – the dark-skinned woman who accompanied her – were experienced dungeon divers that did not align with the Sahilid. Not having their backing meant that they had a lot less certainty and protection, but they also had more freedom and could keep more of what they found. It was a risky business that the two had managed to expertly navigate themselves through. “I suggest that if we continue with more than eight people in total, we split up in two groups and have one group go down the other path.”
Mirgia counted. His own group had seven people and Kimi’s group had eight. Including Fezel and Salandi, there were still another seven adventurers. Three of which were weak and malnourished to the point that they wouldn’t be able to help. They would have to return outside, and as much as it pained him, Jom was going to have to accompany them. Two of Danil’s priests would go with them as well. That still left them with a total of eighteen people. Two groups of nine. Salandi wasn’t happy about going in such a big group, but she admitted that it would be dangerous to go in a small group. This dungeon was different from most of the ones that they’d explored, the magic here felt older and more dangerous. They all returned to the room before the road split in two and after seeing the group that left the dungeon off, they sat in a circle figuring out how to split up the groups. After some debate, one of the other adventurers who wasn’t looking too great was convinced to return with the return group. That left Mirgia’s group with a total of nine people. Besides himself and Kimi, their group consisted of Quint, Sereh and Doroly. They were joined by two Sahilid adventurers named Krashid and Festar, a duo of veteran dungeon divers that would be a welcome replacement of their frontline. Jom would return and Lym and Raol would join the other group. Finally, they were also accompanied by head priest Danil and one of his fellow priests, a woman named Masahi. The second group was led by Salandi and Fezel and included the remaining adventurers and priests. Mirgia wasn’t happy that Raol would join the other group, he considered the smallfolk to be his to protect, but he’d shown earlier how useless he was when it came to some things, and this was the best division they came up with to balance everyone’s capabilities. Sometimes difficult choices would have to be made, but ideally everyone would make their way through this dungeon safely. After everyone divided some of their rations and other supplies and those who were separating from their initial partners said goodbye to them before the two different groups each descended down their respective tunnels. When Mirgia’s group made their way through the room they had been trapped in just earlier. “Haunting,” was all he could say. Several of the others who had been stuck in the trap couldn’t help but agree. They’d put the corpses of the adventurers that had been there too long off to the side and the priests had covered them in the adequate cloth as was tradition, but there was no time or place for a burial. Head Priest Danil put his hand on the door and looked at the rest of the party. “Let us move deeper into this dungeon then.” He said, before pushing open the door and revealing the next hallway.
As if stepping into a completely different world, the hallway behind this door looked different from everything else they’d seen so far. The earlier rooms had been built and sculpted, clearly created by some people. This looked more natural, as if this was a hallway running through the ground that simply was. There were no smooth walls or ceilings, no light sconces or any sign of a mortal’s touch. Somehow it felt even more eerie than the previous space. With no light to go by, Danil ordered torches to be lit. Danil had access to similar magic that Raol had, as he’d informed the others that were with him, but he’d rather rely on torches first, so that if something caused them to go out, they still had the magic as a backup. It took some energy to cast, after all.
Mirgia walked next to Kimi, who looked exhausted. “Are you okay?”
She looked up at him and smiled. “I’ll be fine, it’s just that the magic I had to cast to get you out of that pickle took a lot out of me. It’s nothing permanent.”
“That’s good to hear, I don’t know what would have happened to us all if you weren’t there.”
She shuddered. “I doubt anyone currently in that camp, including the priests here, would have been able to deal with this magic. They’d have to call in someone who specializes in these sorts of traps and in the time it would have taken them to come here, everyone already inside would have likely died like the ones we weren’t able to save.”
Mirgia shuddered at the thought as well. He had been so close to dying and he didn’t like that idea. He was a careful person by nature. There weren’t really any dangers in Milinia, but he’d always been taught to be on the lookout for that to change. Not in a way that made him anxious, but he knew that it was his responsibility alongside his fellow guards to make sure nothing bad would slip past them. He’d always taken pride in his job as well as his ability to execute on it safely. He’d spotted Cobal and Mana’s approach early on and brought them into town as well. It was moments like that one that kept him on edge, you never know what might walk into the forest. But in this underground dungeon, he was out of his element and it made him feel a lot safer to have Kimi here.
Eventually the hallway they traveled down stopped and in front of them was a rock wall, blocking them from continuing.
Opal Kaharis 