Part 1 - The Manticore Training Dungeon
Chapter 3
Character Aurea; Level 1; Class Rogue; Hit Points 20/20; Mana 11/11; Stamina 32/32; XP 25; Next Level 75 XP needed; Rank Unranked; Followers None; Lethality Trivial
The narrow tunnel led into a large room, this one lit with flickering candles stuck to every shelf and crevice. Even the cracks within the cave wall had wax candles shoved into them, the flames licking the rock. Inside the chamber were several tables covered in tools, bones, strange powders in dark-stained bowls, strange material floating in jars, and a low fog that covered the floor like a carpet.
Huck took the first few tentative steps into the chamber, surveying the room. Not finding anything, he took a step to the side and let me in. I quickly took the room in, noting the two sets of wooden doors on either side of the hall. I moved over to one of the tables, inspecting its contents. My attention was drawn to two large jars filled with strange materials inside of them, what looked like an eyeball and some other type of strange, purple-pinkish muscle.
As I stared at the jars, feeling my breakfast start to rise, I gave a sudden shout, slamming the blade of my kukri into the jar like a bat, launching the jar across the room.
“Aurea! What was that?” Huck asked, suddenly spinning with his sword and shield raised.
“The eyeball…” I said breathing heavily, “It… It looked at… me!” I looked over where I had launched the jar with the eyeball in it. The jar had shattered on the far wall and the eye was still staring at me. Just a coincidence, I thought to myself and took a few steps to the left. The eye followed me.
“OH COOL!” Colin said, running across the room to the eyeball and picking it up from the strands that came out of the back of the eyeball. Every time Colin moved the eye, it kept adjusting so that it was staring straight at me. “Look, it follows your movements! I wonder if it’s a magic item?”
“Colin that’s really gross,” Elise said, wandering into the room and standing next to me.
“What’s gross about it?” Colin asked as he raised it to look closer, “It’s just an eyeball. We all have two. Plus it has blue eyes, don’t people like blue eyes?”
“Sure, but not when they are outside my head,” I shot back, still unnerved as the eye kept looking at me, no matter how close Colin examined it.
“The only weird thing about it,” Colin began examining the strange tendrils out of the eye, “Is that its second cranial nerve is longer than usual ones.”
“What do you mean longer than usual?” Elise asked, making a face. “Why do you even know that?” Came her second question before Colin could answer the first one.
“The nerve is just longer than usual. They are typically only an inch or so long. This one is almost six inches! Do you think I can keep it?” Colin asked, I think at Huck, as he pulled out his coin bag and tried to open it with one hand.
“EW! Colin, that’s gross!” Elise said, putting a hand over her mouth as if she was going to gag. I had to agree with her as I watched Colin fumble with his pouch.
His expression suddenly changed from fascination to sudden horror as the ‘longer than usual’ nerve grew in length and wrapped around his arm. It then began to squeeze and pulse, turning his arm an ugly red and purple almost immediately.
Colin screamed as he tried shaking the eye tendril from his arm. “GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!”
No matter how Colin moved his arm, the eye still stared straight at me. I gulped as I moved towards him, unsure of getting closer even as I did.
Before I could reach Colin, Huck was already on top of him and trying to rip off the eye tendril and I saw Colin’s health bar come into focus. The eye tendril was killing him and already dropped a third of his health.
“Anyone seen this in a past dive?” Huck called, his large hands wrapped around the eye monster, one hand around the nerve next to Colin’s arm and the other starting to squeeze the eyeball itself.
I couldn’t recall if I had seen it in a past dive, it was definitely something I would’ve remembered, though all my thoughts were on the horrific creature whose blue eye was still staring at me between the cracks of Huck’s hands.
“It’s not working!” Colin cried as he tried twisting and turning from it, but he didn’t seem strong enough. He couldn’t remove his arm, even with Huck pulling on the other side. Colin was right, whatever Huck and him were doing weren’t even damaging this eye tendril. Its health bar still hadn’t appeared yet, despite the powerful grip of Huck crushing it.
“C-cast snapshot!” I yelled at Colin as I tried to line up the blade of my kukri against the tendrils of the monster.
“I can’t!” Colin whined, “I’m going to die!”
“No you aren’t!” Huck and I both yelled, trying to make sure my kukri didn’t slice into Colin’s arm or Huck’s hand.
“Elise, hold Colin down!” Huck yelled, and I started sawing back and forth on the tendril, but still no health bar appeared.
Elise ran over and grabbed Colin’s bucking shoulders, and it seemed like her presence momentarily calmed him as he got enough wits to make the shape of an L with his thumb and finger, framing the creature and shakily yelling nomen. With his snapshot spell cast, dawning came over Colin’s face, all the while his hit points continued to trickle down to a fraction of his health bar.
“Ma-magic! Someone cast magic!”
“That’s you, Colin!” Huck shouted, just as Colin screamed jaculum, his finger pointing at the tendril. A beam of energy shot from his finger into the tendril, instantly turning a portion of it black and then into dust. Immediately the eye creature stopped twisting and Huck’s hand, still gripping the eyeball tightly, suddenly clenched and eye goo exploded out from his fist spraying over me, Colin, and Elise.
We all were breathing heavily. Colin sat on the ground, Huck over him, Elise holding his shoulders, and me uselessly standing there, covered in disgusting slime. Elise immediately bent over and threw up, crying about the goop that coated her face and hair. I wasn’t feeling much better, but I was able to keep everything down while Colin was wiping eye goo and tears from his face, wincing as he moved his arm.
“What… was it?” Huck asked, a look of disbelief at his fist and the slime that oozed out. He seemed unwilling to look at what remained of the eyeball in his hand.
“Eye tentacle,” Colin sniffed, composing himself. His health bar was almost completely red. Had it dealt any more damage to him, it would’ve staggered him and maybe even killed him if this wasn’t a Trivial dungeon.
“It’s a necromancer’s homunculus, they strangle their victims and like to watch as they do it. They’re almost completely immune to normal weapons but vulnerable to magic. Even 1 point of magical damage will destroy them,” Colin shakily said, slowly pulling himself to his feet with one arm. His other arm, the one that the eye tentacle had crushed was held gingerly against his chest.
“Well, I’m glad you’re OK,” Huck said, patting Colin’s good shoulder and then moving to be next to Elise, rubbing her back. She was still knelt over, though no longer retching, just dry heaving and coughing.
“Alright, no more touching anything in this room unless it’s properly identified, alright?” Huck said, and we all agreed.
Eventually, Elise felt OK enough to cast her heal spell on Colin, expending two castings to recover 10 hit points. Colin was still down a single hit point, which wasn’t something he was letting us forget, but Huck didn’t want Elise spending her last 4 mana points on it. Huck wanted her to recharge a few more points of mana before she wasted it on a single hit point.
After searching the room, we came up empty on anything else useful. Everyone gave the jar with the purple-blue muscle a wide berth, especially now that we could see it moving, almost as if it was licking the inside of its glass jar. The room held several strange materials, powders, plants, and more - had any of us any skill points in crafting, we may have been able to create a potion, but that was a higher level investment. We were only 1st level, with limited skill points to spend.
My main focus was on boosting Disable and Stealth, which both had a single point, and Trapfinding, which had two. Next level, I was planning to put a point in Dungeoneering, but I wasn’t excited about it. I only got 4 at each level and every skill point was needed.
After several minutes of searching, Huck called it and wanted us to proceed, but hadn’t decided on which door to go through. There were two doors, other than the one we had entered through, and they were identical, but on opposite sides of the room. They were both wooden doors with a metal door jamb and a simple latch. Neither was locked.
While Huck decided which way to go, I watched as Colin slowly stretched his arm out in front of Elise. His health bar showed only a chip of red, but Elise was acting as if he was on death’s doorstep. He was acting like he was on death’s doorstep. She cast her heal spell, whispering sana over the wound. Immediately Colin’s health bar turned green, glistened, and then faded away.
I sighed, not looking forward to hearing Huck’s disapproval about wasted mana.