by Eric Vall
“Alright,” I said after Morrigan had given me the correct dimensions. “Now I want you to study those boulders along the river’s edge.” I gestured to the enormous rocks across the water.
“But was my focus not meant to be on the trees?” Morrigan said in confusion.
“You’ve completed your analysis of the trees,” I said simply. “Now we are moving on to other objects. You were able to gather accurate information after a few attempts which is good. However, in the heat of battle, you will not have the luxury of time to make multiple calculations. There are no second and third tries when you are facing an adversary,” I explained with the utmost seriousness. “You will have to accurately ascertain the dimensions of your target as quickly as possible. While your calculations pertaining to width and height do not have to be absolutely perfect, it is imperative that you get as accurate of an estimate as possible. Errors are costly and could result in your death or your comrades’.”
“I understand,” Morrigan said plainly.
“Good,” I said as I folded my arms over my chest. “You have five seconds to study the boulders before you relay to me the essential information. Begin.” I gestured for the elf to start. I wasn’t giving her much time to analyze her targets, especially considering the number of measurements that she had to estimate, but I knew that she was up to the task.
Morrigan quickly turned her head toward the series of boulders that ran along the side of the rivers, and her eyes darted briefly to each one. Counting them was the easy part. What was difficult was determining their approximate size and the distance from where we currently stood. It was challenging, but Morrigan would gain nothing from my taking it easy on her.
If I were going to mold her into a true master of necromancy, I would have to push her.
“Your five seconds are up,” I finally said. “Close your eyes and prepare to give me your observations.” Morrigan immediately obeyed and shut her eyes. “First, how many boulders are there?” I asked as I began to pace back and forth in front of my elvish pupil.
“There are six,” Morrigan said without hesitation.
“Correct.” I slowly bobbed my head in affirmation.
“And how long is the length from the first rock to the last?” I asked the white-haired woman. Morrigan bit her lip and hesitated for a brief moment.
“Approximately thirty yards,” she said quickly.
“Close, twenty-seven,” I said casually. “How far is each boulder from where we currently stand?”
“The first is fifteen yards away, as is the second,” Morrigan said confidently.
“Go on,” I urged.
“The third is twenty yards away, the fourth is…” The pale elf pinched her thin lips together as she struggled for the answer. “The fourth is twenty-two yards away, and the fifth and sixth are… seventeen yards away?”
“Very good.” I nodded approvingly even though she couldn’t see me. “Your only error was with the fourth boulder, it is, in fact, twenty-five yards away.”
Morrigan’s face twisted with frustration, and she made a soft huffing sound.
“Now, tell me the distance in between each boulder,” I instructed.
“I do not understand,” Morrigan furrowed her white brows. “You did not ask me this question when I studied the trees.”
“I know,” I said as I continued to pace with my hands clasped behind my back, “but I’m asking you now. When you are performing death projection on multiple objects, you must know the distance between them so that you can be as accurate as possible.”
“What is the purpose of this?” Morrigan said dubiously. “Can I not use my dark magic on the areas in between?”
“You can,” I said patiently, “but there may be consequences. Imagine that you, Rana, Carmedy, and Annalíse are engaged in combat. Let’s pretend that these six boulders are your adversaries.
“Alright,” Morrigan nodded slightly.
“Now let’s say that you and your comrades end up spreading out as part of your strategy. What if your comrades were standing in those spaces between the boulders, er, adversaries?”
“I would cause them harm,” Morrigan said as realization spread across her face.
“Exactly,” I said. “Precision and accuracy are key when performing death projection.”
“Understood,” the she-elf said with determination.
“Alright then, so tell me the distance between each boulder,” I demanded once more.
Shame filled Morrigan’s voice as she answered. “I… I am unsure of the distance.”
“Open your eyes,” I said kindly. The pale elf slowly blinked her eyes with disappointment on her face. She seemed to be being harder on herself than I was. “From now on when you make your observations, see the whole picture.” I spread my arms out in support of my statement. “Do not think of any measurement as too small or unimportant. As I said, precision and accuracy are key.”
“Yes, Master,” Morrigan bowed her head slightly for a brief moment. “Thank you for teaching me this, and for what you gave me earlier.”
“You are welcome, Morrigan.” I was pleased by her reverence for me. Before long, she would become a formidable user of necromancy, and once I finished training my other minions, we would truly be unstoppable.
Chapter 23
Morrigan and I trained for several more hours before we finally called it a night and returned to our camp to get some sleep. I was already impressed by the elf-woman’s progress. She still had a habit of questioning my methods or the purpose of certain exercises, but I knew that this would lessen until it ceased over time. Morrigan didn’t intend to be disrespectful when she did this, it was simply in her nature to know the purpose of everything. To her, everything had to have a purpose.
We all awoke the next morning to find that the clearing and the surrounding area was swathed in a thick coat of fog. The air was a bit chilly as was the dew-covered grass when my bare hand brushed against it as I rose from my slumber. The sun was already out, but the hazy atmosphere obscured it and gave the typically brilliantly bright source of light a rather fuzzy yellow glow.
“Geeze, it’s cold.” Rana shivered as she bit into a chunk of bread. Her teeth chattered, and even the hairs on her tail seemed to quiver and stand on end. “What happened? Yesterday it was scorching out, and we didn’t travel that far. The climate couldn’t have changed that quickly.”
“There are places which are quite warm during the day and then practically freezing at night or the early morning,” I said as I chewed on a piece of dried meat. “It’s quite common.”
“Yeah, well, I wish the weather would make up its mind,” Rana said with a grimace. “I wasn’t a fan of feeling like I was being boiled alive, but I think I’d prefer that to this cold. And it’s so gross outside, you can barely see your hand in front of your face.” Rana moaned.
“You don’t have hands, Rana.” Carmedy giggled through her mouthful of cheese as she nodded to the fox woman’s paws.
“That’s not the takeaway message, Carmedy, and you know it.” Rana gave the feline a sly grin.
“I know, I know,” the cat said with a smile.
“It is a bit cold,” I said with a chuckle. “But there are much colder places out there, and we’ll come across them at some point. We should enjoy the climate of this continent while we still can.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Rana sighed. “It could be worse, it could be snowing. Or on the reverse side of things, we could be in a desert,” the red-haired fox said with a slight cringe.
“Ohh, I’ve never seen snow before.” Carmedy clasped her hands together excitedly. “I’ve only seen pictures of it in books, it looks so pretty, like globs of white cake frosting.” The green-eyed cat purred and licked her lips.
Rana stifled a chuckle at Carmedy’s words and then shook her head. “Personally, I don’t think snow tastes like frosting, but you will get to see it, eventually. There are dungeons on the snowy continents.”
; “Hooray!” Carmedy said gleefully, and I too laughed at her exuberance.
I was looking forward to the snow as well. In fact, I was looking forward to experiencing all the various climates that the continents had to offer. I had seen snow, and I had visited deserts, but it had been such a long time that I had forgotten what they were like. When I next experienced them, it would feel like it was the first time all over again, and I couldn’t wait.
Within an hour or so, we broke camp and set out for the next dungeon. We did have to travel more slowly than we had previously because as Rana had said, you could barely see your hand in front of your face, so I stayed on high alert in anticipation of any attackers that would take advantage of the fog’s concealment. Rana was also watchful, and her ears twitched in every direction as we traveled along the misty path, but we encountered no adversaries on our journey.
As the day dragged on, the air began to warm up a bit, and the fog gradually began to lift. The air was no longer as hot and stifling as it had been the previous day, and our surroundings began to change. Everything had been masked by the morning fog, but now that it had begun to dissipate, we could see that the surrounding scenery had become that of a very thick green forest. It was much denser than the forests that we had encountered at the start of our journey. The trees were massive. Awestruck by their size, I leaned my head back to see how tall they were.
They were easily over three hundred feet tall, and I marveled at their impressive and towering stature. Their size seemed almost unnatural to me, and I wondered if perhaps they had been planted using some sort of magic. The wooded area came to life with the sounds of wildlife waking from their sleep. Birds twittered high in the trees, and some flitted down to the ground to peck for worms. Squirrels scurried across the trunks of trees, and their cheeks bulged with nuts. The air smelled fresh and earthy.
Soon, we arrived at a split in the dirt road, and Rana instructed Annalíse to lead our party to the right path.
“I wonder what sort of god will be in this dungeon?” Carmedy tapped her chin as we swayed atop Scylla’s back.
“I’m not sure what sort of deity will be there,” I absently replied to the feline as I turned to watch a pair of baby bluebirds in their nest.
“Well, whoever it is, I hope they’ll be nicer than the last one,” Carmedy said pleasantly. “He wasn’t very nice.”
“No, he wasn’t,” I said with a reassuring smile as I recalled the fat nasal-voiced god’s final agonizing moments, “but whoever or whatever we encounter, we will overcome them.”
“I know.” Carmedy briefly looked over her shoulder to give me a quick smile before she faced forward once more.
When our party finally reached the edge of the forest, we saw that it led out to a small grassy hill with an opening carved into its front. On either side of it stood two enormous trees that resembled the ones that we had seen in the forest.
“Is this it?” Annalíse said as she dismounted. “It looks a bit… small for a dungeon.”
“Of course this is it,” Rana said as she hopped down from the cart. “Are you questioning my navigation skills?”
“No, no.” Annalíse put her hands in the air. “I just didn’t expect it to be this size.” The swordswoman gestured to the hill. “The other dungeons we’ve been to were in natural landmarks much larger than this.”
“Hmm, yeah, that’s true,” Rana mused as our group walked toward the hill’s entrance. “This is it though, one hundred percent certain. Maybe this one is smaller than the other ones. Maybe it’ll be easier.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” I said slowly. “Yes, it may be smaller, but I very much doubt that it will be easier to conquer.”
“I agree.” Morrigan nodded. “It would be unwise to make such assumptions.”
“Maybe it’s a magic hill,” Carmedy said brightly.
“Again with the magic.” Rana rolled her eyes as she and Annalíse each lit a torch. “Carmedy, you think everything is magic.”
“Not everything,” Carmedy said with a laugh as the group filed behind me into the tunnel in our usual order. “Lots of things are magic though.”
“Yes, but every time we come across something strange or seemingly unexplainable, your answer is magic. Every time.” Rana laughed airily. “The world is just one big enchanted rainbow to you.”
“Enchanted rainbows are real, actually,” Carmedy said with excitement in her voice. “Someone told me that they--”
“Ah, forget I mentioned the rainbows,” Rana groaned, and Annalíse uttered a similar noise. “I don’t think this is the time to be going down that sparkly road into Carmedyland.”
“Alright then,” Carmedy said with a tone that indicated that she was unbothered. “Some other time. Remind me to tell you. it’s a really interesting story.”
“I’m sure it is.” Rana chuckled.
As we trekked into the darkness, the tunnel that we had entered stretched on. This place was larger than we had anticipated. The passageway slanted downward, and as we continued, a familiar smell reached my nose. It wasn’t the usual scent of stale air and stagnant water that were common in such surroundings. The air smelled… fresh and clean. It smelled earthy. It smelled like a forest. I heard Rana sniff at the air from behind me.
“That’s odd,” the fox-tailed female hummed curiously. She smelled it too.
“It smells like outside,” Carmedy said after she too took a quick sniff.
“Yes, it does,” I said with narrowed eyes as I lowered my gaze to my feet.
When we had first entered, the floor had been made of stone, now the terrain felt soft. I squinted down at the ground below my feet. It was grass. It was peculiar, but then again anything seemed possible these days, especially when it came to dungeons.
As we continued our descent, I began to see light in the distance. It reminded me of when I had left my dungeon. It couldn’t be, and yet it was. It was sunlight. I raised an arm to shield my eyes from the blinding light as we stepped out of the tunnel.
“By the gods,” Annalíse breathed from behind me, and the other women gasped in surprise. “How is this possible?”
“I told you guys it was a magic hill,” I heard Carmedy giggle. “How else do you explain it?”
I lowered my arm from my eyes and squinted as my vision adjusted to the light. I didn’t blame Annalíse for expressing such wonder, and I could see why Carmedy had felt that she had been right about the hill being magic. What lay before us was not a cavern of hard surfaces and cliffs and rocky protrusions. What we beheld was a massive forest much like the one that we had passed through on our way here.
Instead of the cold stone floors that were so typical of dungeons, there were endless lush green fields. I raised my head and expected to see a cavern’s ceiling, but there was none. What my eyes met with was a clear blue sky and the brilliant rays of the sun. I turned to look at the passageway from which we had come. There was no craggy wall, to my surprise, we had emerged from the side of a green hill that looked exactly like the one on the outside.
“Extraordinary,” Morrigan breathed as she knelt down to feel the grass in her hand and glace around our expansive surroundings. “It is real.”
The tree line began several yards away from the hill in which we stood in front of and stretched in every other direction, I couldn’t tell where it stopped.
“What a strange place,” Annalíse said under her breath as her eyes darted back and forth between the sweeping landscape and the sky.
“I’ll say.” Rana snorted. “Anyone care to explain why there are a sun and sky in here? Isn’t it supposed to be dark and dank or at least have rocks or something?
“Usually yes.” I turned to the fox-woman, “but every dungeon is different, simply think about the last one we journeyed to. It wasn’t pitch-black like the others, and the temperature was--”
“Like smoldering death?” Rana interrupted. “Yeah, yeah, I get your point. There’s nothing that says all the dungeons have to be t
he same. Still, the lava and everything about the last one was strange, but this…” Rana stretched her arms out to gesture to the entire area. “It’s like a whole other world down here. I mean come on, another sun? Another sky? That’s insane.” The fox woman threw her paws into the air.
“I will admit it’s rather… unusual.” I paused for a moment, “but let’s not waste time trying to comprehend all of this. Let’s find the deity who lives here and then destroy them.”
“Alright, alright, I get it.” Rana rolled her eyes. “Just saying it’s really weird.”
“Okay, everyone, stay close together,” I said as I turned to walk toward the tree line. “And stay on your toes, those trees would make excellent cover for an ambush. We don’t want to be caught unawares.” My minions nodded silently and obediently grouped around me.
We walked the distance between the passageway from which we had come and the tree line within a few minutes and were soon surrounded by the colossal trees. These trees seemed to be about the same height as the ones in the forest, but now that we were walking amongst them somehow, they seemed to tower over us even more. Compared to their impressive stature, we were mere insects.
As we cautiously made our way through the massive wooden giants, I listened carefully for any sounds that were out of the ordinary. Something was off, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
“It’s awfully quiet,” Carmedy whispered from my left side, and her eyes nervously moved back and forth from tree to tree. “It’s like we’re the only ones in here.”
That was it. This place was too quiet. The forest we had traveled through on our way to this dungeon had been teeming with sounds of animals, as any normal forest should be. This one, however, seemed to be void of any noise at all, or life. There were no birds or rodents or frogs, at least none that I could detect. It was empty.
