Author Games: Dungeon Brawl

Samgar

All things considered, Samgar found his first trip through a magical gateway buried in the heart of a deadly dungeon a bit of a letdown.

As he stepped over the threshold into darkness, there was a distinctly uncomfortable lurch in his stomach, the unexpected drop-off of miscounting the steps in a dark stairwell. There was a roar in his ears halfway between the thunder of a waterfall and the howl of a high wind. For an awful minute, Samgar was being crushed under a hundred mountains–the next, tiny roots were worming their way into his every crevasse, piercing and prying him apart. Then–

Samgar gasped in a breath as he landed hard on his feet. The impact jammed his knee, and he collapsed to the left, slamming into a cool, smooth surface. Everything around him was dark. Samgar staggered to his feet just as Jindi tumbled out of the ceiling, accompanied by the flameless lantern. Eerie blue light filled the narrow passageway, and Samgar had a bare moment to realize their entry point was the same smooth stone as the rest of the tunnel. Jindi landed on her feet in a crouch with a swirl of blue robes, the elegance of it only disrupted by the way she immediately fell backward onto her ass, gripping her head and groaning.

"You alright?" Samgar asked once he was reasonably sure he wasn't going to throw up. Jindi slowly stood up, still pressing her palms to her temples.

"No," Jindi answered, blunt as a mace to the head. "That was the single most disagreeable form of transportation I've ever had the misfortune to experience. And it's only the beginning. Something is very wrong with this place, Sam xiansheng."

"I suppose the day does end in Y," Samgar replied. He took the flameless lantern from where it had fallen between them and hoisted it up. They were standing in a winding cylindrical passageway even narrower than the deathcoil-carved tunnels, shaped from a seamless piece of stone that felt crystalline under his gauntlet-free hand. The ceiling was too low for him to stand up straight, and Samgar grimaced at the thought of further days in claustrophobic tunnels.

With a start, Samgar realized he recognized the stone of the passageway. "Blackglass?" He murmured. He had only seen it a few times–the barber-surgeon had a delicate set of scalpels made from the mirrorlike material. His lips parted as he realized how much blackglass mus have gone into making the place–only mined from faraway volcanos, it was worth its weight in gold. He and Jindi were standing in a treasure trove.

"Samgar, this place is evil," Jindi insisted with a grimace. "I don't know where we are, but it's unnatural. The breath of the world...I don't know how to describe it."

Samgar turned to her. Somehow she looked green even in the blue light. "There's something wrong with the world's magic?"

"It's not there. That shouldn't–it's not possible. But it's gone." Jindi had released her head, but Samgar wasn't foolish enough to think whatever plagued her was gone. "We've gone from a rushing ocean to a stagnant pool. The great web of existence has been cut away. But somehow it's all moving so fast around us like a whirlpool, with nothing but a void at the center. This place should not exist."

"Delightful." Samgar turned to the distant curve of the passageway. "Something tells me standing in this hall isn't going to make the great web of existence come back. We'd better get moving."

Jindi didn't answer him, but after a moment she fell into step behind him. The long curve of the passage yielded another, tighter turn in the same direction. As the pair proceeded, Samgar realized that they were walking in a spiral, constricting slowly towards an unknown center. Their footsteps echoed in the strange, mirrored passageway, his heavy and ringing, hers soft and quick. Eventually, the endless blue on mirrored black started to shift. Light, tinted azure but player than the lantern, began to reflect against the passage ahead of them. They proceeded faster until one final turn opened them out into the largest cavern Samgar had seen yet.