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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3064216" data-attributes="member: 143">Glad to have you with us again, Eric! At this point, I think I HAVE to write; it may sound weird, but when I'm not working on a story or doing something else creative, my mood takes a turn for the worse. Even my wife has commented on it, and since I have a strong motivation to keep her content, well... here we are.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> I'm very pleased by the fine reception that this story has gotten thus far. Up through today, I've gotten approximately 82 views per story update posted... a very nice average! So nice, in fact, that I'm going to post updates today and tomorrow, and then settle down to a M-W-F update schedule starting next week. I have a busy stretch coming up, but I have a number of draft updates already completed, and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to stay ahead of the story for a while, at least. Thanks to everyone for your support, both lurkers and posters! And keep those questions/comments coming!LB* * * * * Chapter 8INTO THE DUNGEONThe first thing they noticed was the stench. It blasted them as soon as they had levered open the secret door at the base of the pit.  Navev had been violently ill, and all of them, even Ukas, had not been immune to its effects.  The foul odor suffused the dungeon like a miasma, and after a while seemed to seep into their very pores to become one with their skin. The complex they entered seemed more like a natural cavern than a worked complex, at least at first.  Rough, uneven crevices spawned off the main tunnel, most of which dead-ended or became too small to navigate after just a few feet.  Following the main spur, they came to a doorway with a rotten wooden door, banded in heavily rusted iron, frozen open on broken hinges.  Beyond that the passage forked off to the left and right.  Bearing right, they found themselves in a small rectangular room.  A few rotting animal corpses—rats, it looked like—and another wooden door in the far wall were the only notable features.“Gods, this... smell,” Navev said, as they fanned out to examine the place.  The warlock was pale, and looked ready to void his stomach again.  “It’s hardly worse than the back allies of Camar,” Dar said, although his expression betrayed his own revulsion at the potent odor.  The warlock paused before a rat corpse.  The light of Varo’s torch showed white spears of bone jutting from the ragged fur.  His lips tightening, Navev lifted a boot to kick the noisome object away from him. Varo grabbed him, suddenly.  “I wouldn’t do that,” the cleric said.  The priest cast about and picked up a sliver of wood about a foot long lying nearby.  He used the scrap to prod the rat corpse, turning it to reveal the ugly green ooze that covered the bones, slowly eating away at the remains. “Green slime,” Varo reported.  “You would have lost your boot.  If you were lucky.  I would recommend additional caution, were I you.”He turned away, and Navev turned paler, if that were possible. On the other side of the room, Dar and Tiros were involved in an argument.  “You’re a naïve fool,” Dar was saying, as Varo walked over to them.  The mad elf watched from a crouch a few feet away, his eyes glowing in the torchlight. “Perhaps,” the marshal acknowledged.  “But that we are all here together by compulsion does not justify this.”  He lifted his hand, showing the binding ring given him by the cleric Valus above, and Varo nodded as he grasped the subject of the controversy. “That elf would as soon kill you, kill all of us, as soon as look at you,” Dar said.  “He bears us no loyalty or allegiance.”“As if any of us do,” Tiros said with a wry smile.  “We are bound together only for the needs of survival, warrior.  I will not keep a slave, even for the sake of this company.”He pulled off the ring.  The elf’s eyes remained fixed upon it, the metal glimmering bright in the light of Tiros’s torch.  “Give it to me, then, if your conscience is so unsettled,” Dar said.  “I’ll keep the wretch under control.”  Tiros shook his head.  “The ring was given to me; in this case, the decision is mine.”  Without waiting for a reply, he tossed the ring to the elf.  The creature leapt up and snagged it in mid air.  His momentum carried him between the two fighters; he hit the ground running, and was gone from the room before any of them could so much as take a breath. “Damn it, I hate it when I’m right,” Dar said.  He pointed a finger at Tiros’s chest.  “It’s on your head then, marshal.  If that creature comes for your head in the deep of the night, I’ll not stand in its way.”Turning, the fighter joined Ukas at the door.  The half-orc looked enquiringly at the fighter.  “Hell, have fun,” Dar said.  With a guttural roar, the half-orc disintegrated the portal into splinters and broken iron fragments.“So much for the element of surprise,” Tiros said.  “I imagine every inhabitant of the dungeon heard that.”“In this case, the decision was mine,” Dar said, leading them into the passageway behind the door. The corridor was unremarkable, culminating in another door more or less identical to the first.  Having made his point earlier, Dar merely gave this door a shove, revealing another rough-hewn chamber beyond.  This place was likewise in poor condition.  A faded carpet barely more than wisps covered the floor, upon which a wooden coffin in equally bad shape rested upon a display stand that sagged beneath its weight.  Pieces of assorted trash were scattered about the room.  A large crack in the wall gaped in the rear corner to the right, while to the left a staircase led down to another area beyond the range of their torchlight.  “Watch for traps,” Tiros warned.  “I like this not.”But after a cautious search, the room did not appear to hold any concealed dangers.  After verifying that the crevice narrowed quickly beyond the ability of any of them to squeeze within, the companions turned to the staircase.  The stairs did not extend far, and appeared to open onto another chamber below. Without waiting, Dar started down the steps, his sword at the ready in his hand, his shield raised to cover his torso. He had nearly made it to the bottom when his left foot crashed through a false step.  His leg slammed hard two feet down into a hidden compartment, utterly destroying his balance.  As his body fell forward, however, something held the limb pinned, and Dar’s face twisted in a grimace of intense pain. “Bastard sons of whores!” he exclaimed. The cry was echoed a moment later by a cacophony of loud squeaks, as a dozen rats the size of bloodhounds erupted from the lower room and came charging in a mass up the stairs.</blockquote>

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