When Serenity finally managed to get far enough behind the Guardian to slice a rear leg, the strike was far more effective than he anticipated. It didn’t just damage the muscle; it sliced cleanly through it and bounced off the bone. The leather wrapping on the leg might as well not have been there; in fact, after he sliced it, Serenity could see pieces of the wrap fall away from the leg, cut apart.

The headless horse-man’s next step backwards put weight on his cut leg. It started to fold under him, but the horseman took a hasty half-step with his other rear leg and managed to become stable again. Despite what had to be significant pain, the horse-man didn’t glance at Serenity; his attention was still primarily on Gabriel, though he kept an eye on Naomi and threatened her with a kick whenever she came close.

Naomi seemed to have figured out her strategy; she was approaching just close enough to be a legitimate threat to the centaur’s front, to make him continue to back off or kick at her. When he invariably did one of those two things, she either let the distance open up or stepped back herself; it was almost like a dance, in a way, but a dance where the participants were not trying to work together.

The monster didn’t move for a moment, which gave Serenity time to get in position for a clean attack on the other rear leg. Before he could strike, Naomi moved in close. The centaur couldn’t step back, so Serenity watched to see which of the other options he would take. A horse would bite; the most sensible option from the centaur was probably to pull the sword and use it to threaten Naomi. Of course, if he did that, he’d have to sheathe it or drop it before he could use his bow; Naomi would have achieved her objective.

Perhaps because of a similar calculation, that wasn’t the choice the centaur made. It shifted its weight and prepared to kick at Naomi. He didn’t seem to intend to connect, but Serenity wasn’t about to tell her to get hit just to throw off the headless horse-man’s balance.

For this, timing was important. Serenity watched as the centaur lifted his hoof. Once he was committed to the attack, Serenity sliced through the back of the other leg, then slid backwards himself to avoid the collapsing, off-balance centaur.

With only two functional legs, the headless horse-man was no longer mobile. It was faced with exactly the problem the plan predicted: it had to choose who to attack and who to be vulnerable to.

The right choice, if it simply wanted to kill someone, was to keep attacking Gabriel.

The right choice, if it wanted to last a little longer, was to defend itself against Serenity. Since it couldn’t seem to attack Serenity, the next best way to stay alive would be to change targets to Daryl; once the centaur was down, his arrows were difficult to deflect and far more likely to penetrate than anything Naomi or Gabriel could manage.

The Guardian didn’t make the right choice. Serenity suspected he was trying to take the second option, but for some reason simply had no idea he was there; he seemed to think Naomi was the threat and the person who’d lamed him.

Naomi was not able to avoid the first arrow the headless horse-man sent her way; she started dodging far too late. She clearly hadn’t expected the attack. It connected in the meat of her shoulder; a fairly bad wound and potentially disabling during a fight, but certainly not that hard to heal once they were out and not at all life-threatening as long as Gabriel was able to get to her in the near future.

When the centaur nocked a second arrow, Serenity was ready. He waited while the centaur drew the bow; once it was taut, he sliced the bowstring. He wasn’t entirely certain it would work; Death magic, even Death magic affected by a Solid Form enchantment, didn’t work well on things that were inert. It wasn’t decay magic; there had to be something to kill. On the other hand, dungeon monsters were not like things outside; to some extent, their gear was part of them. There was more than one reason it often couldn’t be removed from the dungeon.

The string wasn’t cut cleanly, even though Serenity’s manablade went through it with little resistance. Fortunately, however, it was damaged. As it turned out, it was too damaged to support the full draw strength of the bow; it snapped shortly before the centaur would have fired. The pieces of bowstring slapped harmlessly against the centaur’s armor, but it still flinched.

That flinch was enough for Daryl to drive an arrow through the back of the centaur’s upper armor, at almost exactly the same height as his eyes. The Guardian continued to move, but its movements seemed slower and more hesitant, so Serenity followed Daryl’s arrow up with his sword from the other side of the monster. He aimed for the spot where the forehead would have been if the eyes were on a human head.

That was effectively the end of the fight. It took a few more strikes to actually get the Guardian to stop trying to fight, but the danger was gone.

Gabriel and Naomi were both significantly injured; neither wanted to take the time for proper healing, but Daryl and Serenity bullied them until they at least stopped the bleeding and removed the arrows (which required another round of magical stanching).

The fact that there were no direct rewards from the fight and the Guardian (along with all of its gear) disappeared shortly after it finally died wasn’t really a surprise to Serenity. He’d already gathered that whatever this Guardian guarded, it couldn’t be removed from the dungeon. That meant the reward was access to whatever it was. The fact that Gabriel and Daryl both knew what it was and argued over taking the risk because they “needed” whatever it was didn’t tell Serenity what it was going to be, but it told him it ought to be interesting.

Just before the body dissolved, a section of hedge not far from where they’d entered pulled away from itself and revealed a similar passageway. The Silver Blades seemed to have expected it, but didn’t seem to know where it would be. When the opening appeared, Daryl pointed towards it. “It’s over there. Let’s get moving; I still don’t like this place.”

Serenity cocked his head. “Does it move around?”

Daryl chuckled. “Yeah. It always leads to the same place, but which wall opens is different every time.”

There had to be more to it than that; this dungeon was far too fond of hidden secrets for something like that to not have both an explanation and a result. Unfortunately, Serenity doubted the Silver Blades could help. It seemed likely that Guildmaster Zany could explain it, but he was missing. Serenity would probably have to ask the dungeon, and it liked being coy so he doubted he’d get a complete answer without pushing harder than he was really comfortable with over something this apparently minor.

This also wasn’t the time for it. Instead of worrying about something he couldn’t do anything about, Serenity headed for the tunnel’s opening. He waited for the others to catch up; Gabriel, in particular, was only moving slowly.

The path down the green corridor was longer than the shortcut but still only about thirty feet. It ended in another more or less circular room; a small wooden chest sat in the middle of the room and an ornately-carved large black chair, imposing enough that Serenity would not have considered it out of place as a king’s throne, sat at the far side of the open area. “I take it this is the dungeon reward?”

“The box is everything we’ve earned through the whole dungeon, yeah,” Gabriel agreed. He sounded exhausted; healing must drain him more than it drained Blaze. Serenity couldn’t remember seeing Blaze ever seem so exhausted, even when he used up all of his mana. For that matter, Blaze hadn’t seemed that tired when he went through all of his own mana and a fair bit of Serenity’s. “The seat is the reward for beating the Guardian. The dungeon will return us to the entrance once we’ve emptied the box and those of us who want to have taken a boon from the chair.”

A chair that grants boons? Interesting. It was definitely within the bounds of what a Dungeon Guardian might guard; more than that, there was probably a reason beyond its obvious weight that it couldn’t be removed from the dungeon. Serenity suspected that the chair itself was more of a channel than an actual item, but he couldn’t be sure.

Of course, he also suspected that the chair was probably the reason this dungeon didn’t suffer dungeon breaks more often; they weren’t clearing the most important monsters out, since no one was regularly killing most of the monsters on either the eighth or ninth level, but if the chair could redirect some of that excess energy into a boon of some sort, it might well act as its own safety valve. There were reasons that simply clearing a dungeon helped keep it from breaking; killing monsters as well helped but wasn’t necessary if the dungeon was used heavily enough.

Daryl was already at the chest. It opened easily and revealed a pile of coins and a few items; even without checking, Serenity knew the coins were Etherium. They’d split the coins, but while Serenity would make certain he got a fair amount, it wouldn’t materially impact his situation. He still wouldn’t let the split be unfair; the fact that his personal wealth couldn’t be separated from the wealth of his world didn’t mean he should just give it away.

The items, on the other hand, were odd. Serenity’s first thought was that they were meant for crafting, but a closer look told him that wasn’t what he was looking at. There were four perfectly spherical marbles; three were large and one was small. Raw materials wouldn’t be so perfectly shaped; that wasn’t how dungeons did things. Seeing something that was obviously shaped meant that it was meant to be used as it was.

They were all different colors; the big ones were green, brown, and white, while the small one was black. None of the colors were simple or solid, either; they all seemed mottled as the colors visibly moved in each marble. The green one was a range from a pale almost yellow-green through a medium green that was almost blue to a green so dark it was nearly black. The white one carried hints of other colors as it seemed to something be just about to turn clear, though it never actually did. The brown one was all shades of brown, including everything from gray-brown to red-brown; even colors Serenity didn’t often think of as browns were represented, like tan and cream.

The black one was the most interesting to Serenity’s eyes. Like the white one, it held the promise of other colors without actually showing them. Unlike the white one, where it was like the white hid colors that were there, the colors hidden in the black marble seemed almost like the sheen of colors on an oil slick; not really there, shown only because of a trick of the light. More than that, though, there was something about it that just felt right to Serenity.

Daryl, Gabriel, and Naomi were also puzzled. At least, they were all staring at the chest’s contents with frowns on their faces, so Serenity assumed that meant they were puzzled.

Serenity reached out for the black marble. As soon as he touched it, he started laughing; he knew exactly what it was! He simply hadn’t expected such a thing in a low-Tier dungeon; he didn’t think he’d ever heard of Affinity stones dropping before Tier Ten. On the other hand, this was the only direct non-Etherium reward for a nine-level Tier Nine dungeon that was probably all too close to a dungeon break; that could easily explain a slightly higher Tier reward.

Lillene

stanch1

verb

verb: staunch; 3rd person present: staunches; past tense: staunched; past participle: staunched; gerund or present participle: staunching; verb: stanch; 3rd person present: stanches; past tense: stanched; past participle: stanched; gerund or present participle: stanching

stop or restrict (a flow of blood) from a wound.

"colleagues may have saved her life by stanching the flow"

     stop the flow of blood from (a wound).