This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

Alfric was breathing hard, and Hannah was soaking wet, but everyone seemed to be okay. Alfric moved his head from side to side, then released his grip on his shield and flexed his hand a few times.

he said.

Mizuki said.

said Alfric. He turned to Hannah.

she said.

he said.

she said again, removing her helm and shaking her voluminous red hair to get it free of water. Verity hadn’t seen it, but Hannah must have been fully submerged in the pool at some point, perhaps when scrambling back.

said Alfric. There was relief in his voice.

Hannah repeated.

said Mizuki. Despite the fact that she’d contributed just the single fireball, she was breathing heavily, and her eyes were wide. Verity shifted the song again, dampening a bit of the fear and anxiety, and she saw gratitude in Mizuki’s eyes. Fear was one of those funny emotions that could increase themselves if left to fester. asked Mizuki.

said Alfric, shaking his shield arm a bit.

Hannah came over to him, still dripping wet, and laid her hand on his biceps. she said after a bit. That took a moment of concentration on her part, and when she stepped back from him, Alfric rotated his arm around, testing the range of motion and feeling for any pain.

he said.

said Hannah.

Alfric replied. He looked at Verity, who was keeping up her song. He moved around the pool, looking into it for a moment but continuing on. Verity was torn between finding his perseverance admirable and finding it foolish. he said, turning back to look at her.

she said.

said Alfric. He had shifted his stance as he got to the entryway. This last bit was addressed to the group as his light began to illuminate the tunnel.

The next room of the cave was even taller, and it was less natural, a fat cone going up thirty feet, with vines creeping through the dark along one edge. At the top of the cone, the sky was exposed, letting down a shaft of light that illuminated a crumpled pile of skeletons on the ground, which Verity noticed just as she was thinking she was happy for the light.

Alfric charged forward and brought his sword down on the skeletons, shattering bones, but after the first strike, when nothing had moved, he held back, staring at them with suspicion for a long moment before relaxing.

he said.

said Mizuki, then right after that,

Verity had been strumming her lute and murmuring her song, the better to keep it going, but when she heard the word ‘burst’ she immediately released the instrument, letting it swing around her neck by its strap, and clamped her hands onto her ears.

It was no surprise that Mizuki was using fire: the grotto they found themselves in was a wet place, and that would naturally color the ambient aether, at least as Mizuki had explained it. She had gone on in brief about how her spells worked over dinner one night, and the basics of it were that it was largely a thing of coloring and castoffs and opposites.

She had also explained the difference between a fireball and a fireburst. The first was a gob of fiery hotness, while the second was a fiery explosion. She had demonstrated once, in the backyard, and then Verity had asked her to never demonstrate again and to give ample warning, because a deaf bard would have a much harder time doing her job.