Aidan
The Realms
Firstday, 1st week of the 8th month, Godless Age 597
Mid-morning
The Fetid Lair, Mistvale Highlands

Aidan rushed up to Brighid, already starting the chant for Patch Wounds as Pulse of Life began slowly knitting Brighid back together. He placed his hands directly on her Wound, willing the healing energy from his spell into her, and gasped, "Are you alright? I don't know that I can heal a Wound like that!"

Still panting heavily, Brighid managed to wheeze out, "Yes. A bad cut, but only a Minor Wound." Aidan watched as the ragged tear in her smooth, tanned skin began to seal itself back together. Growing short of breath from the Stamina drain of Pulse of Life, he reluctantly allowed the spell to fade.

Aidan hugged Brighid tightly, not even caring about the blood and ichor covering her or that he was embracing her hard plated torso rather than her soft and welcoming flesh. "Oh, thank God. I was terrified! That would have eviscerated a human, torn out your intestines and fouled your blood. People don't usually survive injuries like that."

Brighid smiled tiredly at him and ran her fingers through his hair soothingly. "Well, good thing for me that centaurs are a little hardier! My intestines are down in the lower half, not up there. That hurt like Hell, but it's all muscle; that is why the armor is not as heavy." She brushed a bloody thumb across his cheek, wiping away a tear. "Do not worry, my love. I am not that easy to kill." Then she grinned. "Besides, I got a level out of that." While he continued healing Brighid, Aidan checked his own prompts.

"Well, the good news is that the quest I got from Anwn had an optional goal to kill five Hive Guards. Presumably, there aren't any more of those things to deal with. With how tough they were, though, I'm worried about whatever the Lord-Consort is."

Brighid nodded and agreed, "Yes, that is a little worrisome. And there are bound to be many more adults, and probably some juveniles as well. The Queen herself is likely to be almost entirely helpless, though, if we can fight through to her. Those five were so dangerous because they all came at once; fighting five enemies at once is exponentially harder than one at a time. I could have handled a single one of them with ease."

"Yeah," he agreed, "but nothing in this place has been polite enough to come at us single file, and the Queen is surely going to be well-guarded."

"We can leave if you want, but the hive will recover quickly as long as she survives. I think we can still win, but if you are not feeling confident, there should be nothing between us and the exit. It is better to retreat than to die fighting."

Aidan thought it over as he recast Pulse of Life, rapidly healing Brighid's remaining injuries. "No," he finally decided. "Let's finish this out. If you think we can win, I'll trust your judgment. Let me catch my breath, though; that spell takes me out pretty fast. Then, let's see what the Hive Guards were guarding."

After a few minutes spent recovering Aidan's Stamina and Brighid's health to full, they both climbed to their feet. The well-armored Paladin led the way into the chamber, her pulsing light magic revealing a small, roughly circular room. Sticky masses of what looked like white foam covered the far wall, and several tiny, mandible-less mites crawled all over them. "Eggs," Brighid identified. "This must be the incubation chamber. That smaller passage there in the back corner must lead from the Queen to here, and those nurses carry egg sacks from her to here and care for them. Since that they are not attacking us, they are probably not capable of it. Love, if you will do the honors?"

Aidan nodded and, a second later, the thousands of eggs began to go up in flames. The nurses scattered like roaches, fleeing from the fire, but in the end, they didn't matter. A minute later, the egg sacks are nothing but blackened, desiccated husks. After spending another minute ensuring he didn't miss any, Aidan and Brighid headed into the small shaft and towards what they hoped to be the end of the Dungeon. It was so narrow that they had to crouch just to fit.

Fortunately, the nursing tunnel was reasonably short, and before long, they turned a bend to see the darkness of another room. As they crept forward bit by bit, the light revealed the cavern floor, then a massive, bloated, yellowed abdomen with an adult-sized mite vibrating on top of it. As they watched, a bulge passed down its length, and a sticky egg sack the size of a beachball plopped wetly onto the floor beneath the Queen. Aidan shared a glance and a nod; then, he unleashed the fire and the fury.

Seven glowing embers streaked past Brighid to explode directly against the Queen's protruding rear end. The flames washed over the male fertilizing her eggs as well as the egg sack, scorching both into lifelessness. A screeching roar sounded from farther in the Queen's chamber, and they heard the buzzing sound of adult mites taking wing and speeding their way. "Here they come!" Aidan called out an unnecessary warning as Brighid settled onto her knees in front of him and readied her glaive. He fired streams of burning death over her back into the Queen until the first of the three-foot-long adults entered his view. He managed to scorch the first one out of the air, but then his flames died out, and the rest were upon them.

The narrowness of the nursery tunnel worked to their advantage, forcing the adults to come at Brighid two or three at a time. They are far less dangerous to her than the Hive Guards were, and Brighid easily bats away the first wave, slicing them to pieces with her polearm and crushing them with the butt end. Just as Aidan prepared to unleash another Barrage, however, more adults swarmed through the entrance and, behind them, something much, much bigger heaved into view. Brighid's light glinted off of thick, black carapace and eyes that gleamed with malevolent intent. It bent its massive head towards them and screeched again, but Aidan could see that its body was much too large to fit into the passageway. The fiery coals of his Burning Barrage surrounded his head, and he smiled with grim satisfaction as he sent them darting and corkscrewing through the swarms of adults right into the open mouth of what must be the Lord-Consort.

The brutish monster staggered back, reeling and roaring in pain as half a dozen miniature grenades exploded in its mouth and gullet. It thrashed and flailed and crashed into the Queen behind it. Aidan dual-cast Flame Jets and directed them toward the Lord-Consort, but he didn't have nearly the same precise control over them, and the flames mostly impacted the adult mites swarming the entry. There were so many of them that, with the Lord-Consort no longer looming, they completely clogged the entrance. Several of them were pressed up against Brighid by their fellows, stabbing at her with their legs and biting with their lamprey-like mouths. Her armor protected her, however, and they could not get at her unarmored equine belly. She smashed them with her gauntleted fists and the butt of her glaive, and Aidan poured fire over them while waiting for Burning Barrage's cooldown.

Once the spell was available again, Aidan sent the glowing motes careening into the writhing mass of mites to explode directly in the middle, blowing half of them back out of the tunnel and crushing the others against Brighid and the walls. One dubiously lucky individual was propelled over Brighid's back and past him; Aidan incinerated it with a Flame Jet. Temporarily free of the crushing weight of dozens of Rock Mites, Brighid planted her hooves and shoved back against the insect-like creatures crawling over her, knocking them from her back. Aidan's flames and Brighid's attacks and Fiery Aura make short work of them, leaving dozens of smoking, twitching corpses in the tunnel, and one pissed off Lord-Consort protecting its Queen with its body in the chamber.

Brighid turned to Aidan and laughingly announced, "I believe I will allow you the honor of defeating that monstrous lout in there. I would not want to claim all of the kills, my Lord." Aidan wagged a finger at her, then began firing Flame Jets and Burning Barrages into the Queen's chamber. The Lord-Consort stoically blocked the entrance with its body and scrabbled around futilely with immense rending claws, but it could not reach him. It suffered through an incredible amount of damage from sustained Fire Magic, and once it collapsed in a smoldering heap, the Queen took nearly as much punishment. Still, the outcome was inevitable once the smaller Adults were all defeated.

"By Birgitte, I got two levels out of that." Aidan grinned at Brighid. "Did I say that right?"

Her mouth twitched. "We will work on it. That is not all, however. Look over there; see that glowing orb?" She pointed over towards the corpse of the Rock Mite Queen, and, sure enough, there was a spherical object floating in the air glowing an indescribable color. "That is the Dungeon loot. Go on, touch it, let us see what we get!"

Aidan shook his head and said, "Just a moment. I want to distribute my Attribute and Skill points before I forget." Quickly, he decided on an allocation: 2 in Logic, Willpower, Charisma, Toughness, and Endurance, 4 in Intuition, and 1 in Luck. He didn't want to neglect his Health and Stamina completely, and he decided to put the extra Attribute points from the quest into Intuition for Vivimancy spell power. The Skill bonuses he split between Command, bringing it up to Novice rank, and Evasion, likewise increasing its level.

"Now, for the loot..." Aidan strode over and reached out towards the strange glowing orb. He touched it with the tip of one finger, and it instantaneously contracted to the size of a golf ball. Aidan jerked his hand back, startled, then yelped and ducked as it exploded with a loud pop. Items clattered to the ground all around him. He quickly recovered and knelt down to sort through the treasure. All told, there was quite a haul. There was just one problem, however:

"But... what does any of this do?" Aidan asked plaintively. "All of it is 'Unidentified suchandsuch'!" He exaggerated a little; there were also piles of coins, gems, and what he assumed were crafting materials. Not knowing what the magical items did bothered him, though.

Brighid nodded. "We will need someone skilled in Item Lore to identify them. Mother has some knowledge of the Skill, and she will be happy for the experience from it. Now, come on. Let us finish exploring the Dungeon to make sure we do not miss anything and then get out of here. We are both desperately in need of baths." Despite his disgruntlement over not knowing what any of his loot actually did, Aidan was forced to agree with Brighid's last point. They distributed the goods, mostly into Brighid's saddlebags, although she had to carry the cuirass and strap the shield to her back.

A search of the Queen's chamber revealed an exit to the right of the nursery tunnel that led nearly straight down—"Probably where the mites came from; they do not like to travel under the open sky," according to Brighid—and another tunnel which eventually led to the steep slope they declined to climb earlier. Satisfied that they had explored everything that it was reasonable to at the time, Aidan and Brighid made their way out of the Dungeon and into the clean, fresh air. Checking the sky, Aidan was surprised to see that it was mid-afternoon, within an hour or two of sunset.

Brighid handed Aidan a rag, and he wiped off a spot on her barding for him to sit, put a padded blanket on her back, and climbed aboard. She set out at an easy canter, and they arrived within a short distance of the village just before sunset. Aidan slid down off her back, and the two of them headed for Brighid's private bathing spot. They cleaned each other and do their best to wash their clothes and armor, then spent some time cuddling and kissing on the pool's shores while they dried off. Once the sun vanished behind the mountains, they managed to pry themselves apart and head back into the village, both as naked as the day they were born, though loaded down with loot and gear. For once, Aidan just didn't care if anyone stared; after clearing the Dungeon, and playing such a vital role in it, his confidence was at an all-time high.

Zurai

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