Spear of Clouds Unfurled 5.1

The third level of the dungeon was hot, dry, and impossibly big. A shimmering, featureless horizon stretched out in all directions from the lake that held the previous level's ‘boss’—a giant crab-monster that I hadn’t seen, and which we were prevented from backtracking to by some kind of magical barrier.

Our bracelets had brought us to a small circle of carved obelisks covered in flowing runes, a little way beyond the lake’s barrier, although it wasn’t at all clear where we were supposed to go after that. The rolling dunes of the desert radiated outwards, without any obvious landmarks on the horizons beyond. The ‘sky,’ although it couldn’t be the real sky, was a deep, vast blue, and the sun seemed somehow bigger and hotter than the real Alarian one.

Although we had been the first to reach this level, we had fallen behind three parties which had beaten the crab-like boss of the second floor, and begun exploring the vast desert. They had reported encountering such wonderful things as quicksand, giant scorpions, air elementals, and cacti that fired rigid spines at arrow-like speed.

“So, which way?” asked Velevir, holding up a hand to shield her red eyes.

She was back in her usual gear, heavy armour a little finer than her old set — which had been damaged in the attack on Guildport, and with a very fancy vambrace that told the time which she had been deeply touched to receive from Nathan.

I was also in a few pieces of new gear. I had added some light gauntlets to the mix, along with armoured greaves which clipped on and around my Boots of Swiftness. The additional metal made me a bit slower, but I preferred to have a bit more protection given what I had read about on this level. The sapphire ring we had found upon defeating the second floor's boss had also turned out to be a ring that bolstered illusions, and which now sat on my right finger. My bow was back in my hand, along with a quiver full of fresh arrows and despite the uncomfortable heat I was glad that we wouldn’t have to spend anymore time in the twisting aquatic depths.

“Hmm,” said Lord Mousington, levitating a shard of metal above his paw, which was swinging this way and that. “We are not sure. The magnetic field of this place is wrong. We cannot sense North.”

“What about that book?” asked Nathan. “The one we got from here?”

I opened my bag and pulled the tome out, flicking through it for a few moments. I’d shown the book to a few people in the handful of days we'd had after returning empty-handed from the Caith camp, although they said they had no idea as to the significance of any of it, or the identical copies all the groups who had defeated the second boss had received.

It was filled with diagrams of angular temples and fortresses and obelisks and towers, surrounded by flowing runes that looked very similar to the ones on the obelisks where our teleport bracelets had brought us. There were also a whole host of what looked like constellations, minutely labelled in the inscrutable language, although the significance of it all was lost on me.

I shrugged.

“Nothing obvious,” I said. “I guess we pick a direction and start walking?”

And so, for the next eight hours, that’s what we did. We climbed up dunes and slid down them. We ran into quicksand that nearly pulled my boots off as Nathan and Velevir hauled me out of it. We counter-ambushed several massive scorpions I sensed, lying in wait beneath the sands; we were cut and bruised and burned by the whirring elementals of dust and air which I struggled to feel and came out of nowhere; Mousington lobbed bolts of lightning at a grove of cacti we suspected might be the ‘shooty’ kind from the top of dune behind Nathan’s shield and we were rewarded with a chest full of money and bits and bobs; but we didn’t find any of the temples or fortresses as depicted in the books, and by the time that the ‘sun’ was retreating below the ‘horizon’ we were exhausted.

“I take it back,” said Velevir taking a swig from her now very warm wine-skin. “Give me underwater again; even zombies, this sucks.”

“Yeah, it’s a bit rough, isn’t it?” said Nathan, turning one of his metal reinforced boots upside-down and tipping out quite a bit of sand.

“We hates the sand!” agreed Lord Mousington, scratching at his ear. “‘Tis coarse, and gets in our fur!”

“The other groups said that this one was rough,” I said, swishing my tail, and picking a slice of grilled fish out of my ‘bento box’ that Meria had made me.

My girlfriend’s bar and grill had been mostly destroyed by the Caith attack, but she was nothing if not resilient, and had set up something much more basic, but still functional. She’d needed to borrow a bit of money from me to do so, but now that I was delving again hopefully I’d have a steady stream of income.

“We could go back and do the second level again?” I said. “Map out more? Other groups have found some mini-bosses that give rewards?”

Velevir shook her head. “We need to keep on pushing,” she said, pulling out her dark grey Guild insignia. “I’m Iron, and Mousington-”

“Lord Mousington!” insisted Mousington.

“Sorry, Lord Mousington is Bronze, but you two are still Coppers,” she said. “That drags us down the priority list. As soon as more people reach this level, we’re going to find it harder and harder to get slots to delve.” She stuffed her insignia back into her armour. “You two need to get off your behinds and take the damn Tin test! And then the Bronze!”

“You think we’re ready?” I said.

Velevir had mentioned the tests a few times, but I’d never really thought much about it—I had too much else going on to really worry about Guild ranks.

“The tests are much easier for healers,” said Velevir. “And you’re already delving ‘higher’ than a Copper should. Also, you can make people shit their pants and curl into a gibbering ball without even a word or a gesture, and kill with a touch. I don’t think you really understand how terrifying your magic is.”

My tail swished. My friends had been a bit disturbed to find out I could do that. “I never would though.”

“You’re both ready for Tin,” said Velevir, ignoring me. “In fact, all you’ll need to do, since I’m Iron and can vouch for you both, is a small written test and a spar against someone Laera chooses. Nathan will do well enough, and all you'll have to do is make them think you're a demon, or however you do it, and make them run out of the ring. You'll pass.

"Bronze will require more preparation, is a harder test, and it costs a fair bit to take, but if you work at it, you’ll probably be ready in a couple of months. Outlanders grow fast.”

“Sure, ‘work at it,’ in all that free time I have,” I said.

“Charlie, we need to keep our average rank in the party up, otherwise we will be delving once a week at best,” she said. “There is a reason why people don’t just stay Coppers. The equation for priority punishes it harshly.”

“Alright, alright, I’ll take the test,” I said, holding up my hands.

“Guess we should keep on going then?” said Nathan, accepting the wine-skin from Velevir and taking a swig.

“Yeah,” said Velevir, reaching into her bag and getting out her own meal. “We should.”

Still, no one was in a real hurry to get going again, and the temperature began to fall as night truly fell, painting the rolling dunes silver in the light of a large silver moon. The stars began to come out…

“The stars!” I said suddenly, scrambling for my bag.

“Eh?” said Nathan, looking up from where he had been sharpening his sword.

“The stars!” I said, pulling the strange book out and flipping through it, alternating between looking at the first constellations to emerge above me and the pages. “Why would we have been given a book with stars in it, and a level that has a fake sky if they weren’t related?”

“Because dungeons are insane beings that don’t think like we do?” said Velevir.

“Yeah-nah, Chezza’s right,” said Nathan, clanking over to kneel next to me to peer over my shoulder. “It’s a puzzle.”

“There,” I said, pointing up to a constellation to my left, a sort of tree, or perhaps a mushroom. It was represented on the page as above an obelisk sticking out of the ground at the ‘base’ of the tree. “That matches the one in the book.”

“So, we… go in that direction?” asked Velevir.

“Better than wandering aimlessly,” said Nathan, sheathing his sword and standing up. “Shall we?”

A.N. Yes, I know that arc title isn't the line in the poem, but it's what I heard when I first heard it sung and it sounded badass so I am leaning into my inability to properly hear song lyrics.

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