‘Why is she doing that?’ Dog asked when he noticed her walking to a mound in the distance.
‘Elves are only small,’ Grim conjectured, ‘and therefore have many predators. I expect this is something they do to keep safe.’
‘Oh, it’s an elf thing,’ said Dog, a little dismissively.
‘Actually,’ said the wizard Sandon, overhearing the conversation, ‘Raya is one of the most respected adventurers of her generation. Her caution and care has got me through many a scrape, I can tell you.’
‘How long have you been doing this?’ Grim asked him.
‘Oh, for years. Before the Bureau even existed.’
After a bit of squabbling, Assata and Gurin agreed to leave the road and cut across country towards the first dungeon on their list. For the first couple of miles they walked through farmland and past small settlements, that clung tightly to the safety of the road. But beyond this thin zone of human habitation was wild, untamed land, that you didn’t enter without the numbers and weapons to back you up.
‘Deepwood Dungeon is in the heart of the forest,’ the barbarian explained, pointing into the distance to a treeline that was the beginning of the woodland. ‘It’s one of the closest dungeons to Mer Khazer, but most parties avoid it because you have to get through the woods to reach it. It’s not even worth considering unless you have an elven guide with you. Luckily for us, we have the best in the business.’
Raya gave a self-conscious little salute.
They made their camp amongst the trees that evening. It wasn’t an environment much suited to ogres: the wood was a maze full of snags to trip you up and the game was small and agile. Og-Grim-Dog contented themselves with collecting wood, which Gurin turned into a blazing fire. Sandon and Brother Kane fetched water from a brook and the dwarf soon had a pot bubbling. Assata appeared with a brace of rabbits and she and Gurin paunched the animals with practised ease.
‘Good source of protein,’ commented the barbarian. ‘Just not much of it.’
Finally, Raya appeared. She had filled her knapsack with vegetables and herbs. She emptied it onto the ground for everyone to inspect. Most plentiful were long, greenish-yellow sticks that the elf called ‘carrots’. Grim thought they looked revolting, but even Dog had the manners not to openly complain about the elf’s efforts.
‘Oh, you found mushrooms?’ Assata asked, an excited tone to her voice. ‘Full of antioxidants, you know.’
‘Maybe we should throw them out, then?’ Dog suggested.
Assata laughed. ‘You are funny, Dog.’
‘I wasn’t joking,’ Dog mumbled under his breath, until Grim hushed him.
‘I haven’t seen ones that look like that before,’ Assata added.
‘Erm—yes, well, these ones tend to only grow in the Deepwood,’ said Raya.
‘Oh. We’re lucky to have you with us,’ said Assata. ‘We’ve got some rabbit. Any suggestions?’
‘The simplest way to cook rabbit well is to drown it with booze,’ said Raya.
‘Oh,’ said the barbarian, looking disappointed. ‘That’s so unhealthy. We’ve done so well with our abstinence as well, Raya.’
‘I know, it’s a shame,’ said the elf, who didn’t sound very disappointed to Grim’s ears. ‘But think how healthy the rest of the meal is.’
‘I suppose.’
And so the rabbit went in the pot with the carrots and the other vegetables, and the herbs and mushrooms as well, along with a generous helping of Kuthenian red wine. When it was served, even Dog had to admit it was a tasty stew.
From then on, Grim’s memory of the night was somewhat hazy.
Afterwards, everyone agreed that it was just as well that they had the elf with them. For the Deepwood was full of strange sights and sounds that night.
Sandon swore that the Queen of the Fairies had appeared and tried to lead him off through the trees to her realm. Fortunately, he was saved when he tripped over a tree root and knocked himself unconscious.
Assata said she had fought against foul winged demons, killing at least six of the creatures. There was no sign of their bodies the next morning, though Raya mentioned that demon corpses did have a tendency to melt away into a fine mist.
Gurin had apparently been visited by his ancestors, who had told him many ancient secrets of his race. Come morning, he struggled to remember them, except that his great-grandfather, Cracked Blurin, had in fact been a Mer-man disguised as a dwarf. Gurin insisted that this fact explained a lot, though Grim remained rather doubtful.
As for Og-Grim-Dog, they had come under attack from a giant spider. Grim distinctly remembered that Dog had seen it first, and he heard his own voice trying to reassure his brother that the spider wasn’t actually that large. Then Raya had said ‘how about now?’ and suddenly he had come face to face with its huge eyes and had screamed in terror.
Everyone agreed that while all these disturbing encounters had been taking place, an unceasing maniacal laughter had echoed throughout the forest. The more Grim thought about it, the more he thought it had sounded like Brother Kane, which made it all the more bizarre and terrifying.
It was only in the morning of the next day that their sanity returned. Grim slowly woke from a daze to find himself walking through the forest. Og and Dog were both clutching a length of rope and when Grim looked about he saw that everyone in their party had a grip of the same rope. Ahead, Raya had the rope tied about her middle and was leading them along a path that cut through the dense trees of the Deepwood.
When she heard the mumbles and muttering of her friends waking from their stupor, she stopped, and let them catch up to her. ‘We made it through the worst terrors that the Deepwood could throw at us,’ she told them. ‘Well done, everyone. This path takes us to the dungeon. We’re nearly there.’
DEEPWOOD DUNGEON: LEVEL ONE
The path ended in front of a cream-coloured building made from giant slabs of marble. Balusters rose up the length of the walls, while green moss and the climbing plants of the Deepwood had made the exterior their home.
Grim’s eyes were drawn to the archway that led inside the building. Beyond it was shadow, somehow both inviting and foreboding at the same time. Sitting just above the archway was a peaked marble roof and either side of it two decorative pillars. When Grim looked closer, he saw that what he had taken for pillars were actually marble statues, both of them worn and chipped. But he could clearly see that they were hooded figures, with both hands on the hilt of a sword that ran vertically down, so that the point of the blade was inches above the ground.
‘Deepwood Dungeon,’ said Gurin with some reverence. ‘A fitting challenge for our first dungeon crawl together.’
Without being told to, everyone in the party made last minute adjustments to their packs and armour. Weapons that had been carried on backs or at belts were now in hands. Tension gripped Grim’s belly. Once they passed under that archway, they had to be ready.
They looked at one another for a few seconds more. They all knew that they would have to work as a team; rely on each other to survive. It was good to look your friends in the eye before you stepped into Gehenna.
‘Let’s do this,’ said Assata. Her voice was quiet but steady.