You don’t realize how dangerous slimes can get until you see an uncountable mass of them falling upon you, daisy-chaining together before cinching tight in the shape of razor teeth, all studs in the bear trap you didn’t know you were in until seconds ago.
Nyx thought they were thinking big when they saw seven slime cores align for a picture-perfect moment and fired a little light laser through them all. As they killed seven, thousands more loomed over their head.
From behind, they heard a whip of wind and a curse—must’ve been a failed maneuver from Dulcen. Then a chorus of less distinct grunts. Then the slime-gang falling with the force of a tidal wave.
The teeth of the trap were shutting above them and falling fast. In moments, all the divers would be engulfed.
Nyx looked up thinking, AAAAAAAAAA...
...aaaaaaugh?
Those teeth that had once looked so vicious were now disintegrating into a shower of gloppy hail—pathetic, if still kind of painful, but only slightly denting everyone’s skulls. The divers had found a way to break the wave! Thanks, Giant Armada of Sparrows That Hue Just Summoned And That Were Now Flitting About in the Half-Darkness!
***
Aaaaah, thought Nyx two hours later, none too amused.
Now, after hours of fighting puny slimes that couldn’t even unify correctly, after picking off legions of seriously minor threats, had come...the truly tedious part.
A powerful lantern, powered by a battery Ragnorre had charged, stood in the approximate center of the narrow passage. At one end was the way to the giant pit entrance, and at the other was the way forward, under an archway that looked oddly neat, as if mortal builders had descended just to carve it. They couldn’t go forward, though, until they’d dealt with the stuff in between: a lot a lot of cleaning. The walls and floor were not only pseudo-earthquakey, their fissures filled with goop, but also just dirty. And the dirt was alive—and strong enough to kill individuals without magic. Therefore, the divers had to eradicate the slimes here...by cleaning.
They got paid a lot, but it still wasn’t enough.
They were exhausted. Even Nyx’s demon bones were aching, and those weren’t even real bones at this point. The only one among them who’d sustained real injuries was Linzy, apparently having been caught by surprise by slime after slime. Yet Lark had her healing work cut out for her—before cleaning, everyone came to her with actionable sprains and bruises.
After that, Dulcen stood next to the lantern, rubbed his hands importantly, and announced, “Here’s what we’re gonna do: to avoid group conflict, we’ll split cleaning duties according to our strongest and weakest links.”
Lark got in front of him and coughed loudly. “Excuse me? What a ludicrous thing to do when there hasn’t been any discord in the first place.”
“It’s alright, miss,” said Linzy in his tattered cloak. He bowed his head and stepped backward.
“No, you come back,” said Lark.
“Good on you, kid! Stay back,” said Dulcen.
“No!” barked Lark. “What does scraping walls have to do with combat skills anyway!?”
“It’s preventative!” cried Dulcen.
“Uhhhh...” said pretty much everyone else in the corridor, sensing a hurricane in the making. They reached into their dungeon-diving utility belts, pulled out rock scrapers (which resembled razors from hell), and separated themselves into little groups.
Nyx watched Ethel and Catamaug detach and walk to their own nook. Emptying their head, they focused on their own wall segment and welcomed the distraction of a still-tingling ache in their arm.
***
Whatever excitement this dungeon had once held for Nyx, it hadn’t come back at all. They figured it wouldn’t return later, either.
When the adventurers finished cleaning their stretch of cavern—up to and including the ceiling, using razor-scrapers as well as what seemed to be overlong tooth scratchers—it was night. Well, they pretended it was night, since the surface was gone to them. The lantern was dimmed to simulate a cold campfire. Beyond the archway leading to the next room, that archway whose constructedness was either welcoming or eerie, were starlike twinkles.
The whippy farmer guy, Catamaug, told a story of drakes storming through Farander, including a particularly strong velvetdrake. Monsters that wrecked the town for no apparent reason other than a blind rage. Nyx had heard worse before, so they sat to the side and drifted off. They found their eyes flitting to the archway quite a lot.
There was something blissful about it. Even though Nyx felt like they were hanging between two waystations of life, now that their rote work had come to a pause, they felt a bit relaxed.
Then they stretched out along the drying rocks. Falling asleep was so easy that Nyx almost thought it would be, likewise, easy to dream. It wasn’t. They closed their eyes and saw the hanging jowls of their very large abusive former lover.
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