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  [Sigurd]

  His first thought was wow! The darkness that blotted out the entrance went on for a long while. He was ten steps in and he still wasn’t out of it. However, after another few, slow, deliberate steps, thumping the floor with his axe handle to determine where it was, the darkness faded away.

  One would think that spending two minutes advancing the 15 steps to get through the darkness was slow going, but since the dungeon was completely unknown, not just to Sigurd, but to everyone, he wasn’t going to be taking any chances.

  He’d heard rumours that new dungeons often tried to throw everything they had at adventurers straight away in a frenzied effort to kill them, once they had matured and become stable, then they could be farmed easily, but at the start it could be very dangerous in their frenzy. Sigurd didn’t want to have that happen to him here.

  It was often said that a new dungeon was the most dangerous one and he felt that it may well be true, Sigurd was nervous, normally he would be both physically and mentally prepared to face the dangers having been given the information from those who came before. Now he was one of those and when the dangers hadn’t been catalogued yet anything could take him by surprise and being surprised often meant death.

  Emerging from the darkness, he stumbled around like a baby deer, new to the new world as he was bombarded by the sights and smells, and the overwhelming intimidating aura that was always present with a dungeon as everything blossomed around him.

  Instead of the small, cramped tunnel he was expecting, a large open woodland greeted him. The sounds of life exploded over him as he stepped from the darkness of the entrance tunnel and into the first floor.

  Some of the first things that drew his attention were the sounds, his keen ears picking up the rustle of the grasses and the leaves in the wind, the humming buzz of flying creatures and the occasional tweet-tweet of various birds that called out at him, adding to the serenity of the place.

  The sweet smell of sap and wood mixed with the earthiness of the ground, giving a fresh scent that Sigurd felt could almost convince him that he was outside, under the summer sun, instead of in a dungeon in the tail end of winter. It was a feeling carried forth with his each and every breath.

  A thick layer of grasses obscured the ground in the huge cavern. Waist high. They could be hiding all manner of creatures, or traps. Luckily, nothing had charged at him thus far as some dungeons were wont to do.

  Emerging from the grasses, thick wall like hedges grew tall, working to divide the floor into more enclosed sections, almost like the rooms within a normal dungeon, and within each of these rooms he could see large droopy trees emerging, only the top few branches visible over the hedges. Thin vine like branches extended downwards, wafting gently in the breeze.

  Breeze?

  The thought stops him for a moment, why is there a breeze here? He asked himself. Dungeons don’t have a breeze, they are stale and imposing. It’s unsettling.

  Across the woodland, on the opposite side of the cavern, he spied what looked like a simple staircase, presumably descending to the next floor. It looks almost like a cave, blending into the walls around it quite well. But his experience is enough to spot it. The exit is partially obscured by the branches of one of the trees, positioned underneath, the branches acting like a curtain, a trap perhaps.

  He took a few more steps forwards without thinking, and when he caught himself at it, focus returning, he chastised himself.

  “That was bad Sig, very bad” he muttered, annoyed with his distraction.

  Clearly, he was rusty, having been distracted at the beauty of this dungeon, forgetting the danger it held so easily.

  Whilst staring around, his mouth dropped open, looking like a gormless idiot, he could easily have been taken unawares by the dungeon.

  It’s not a woodland, but a dungeon, he thinks hoping it will keep him focused.

  With his senses sharp, he carefully observed the surroundings, this time looking specifically for any kind of threat, rather than the appreciative gazing he was doing previously.

  Nothing stands out. He was lucky, the mistake had gone unpunished. Though, it wasn’t likely it would have killed him, it was the first floor after all. The thought is slightly mollifying. Nonetheless, it was something he couldn’t afford to do again, especially seeing as he was alone.

  As Sigurd set off exploring the floor, he pushed through the grasses, avoiding the thicker patches as best he could, and stopping every so often to listen. Mobs would have just as much trouble moving quietly through the grasses as he did, and he hoped this fact would allow him to catch onto their presence before they caught onto his.

  Ten minutes later he was still pushing forward, having not encountered anything yet. It was odd, nothing that he had seen so far would pose any threat, there were no large animals or even predatory ones that he could find, no traps for the careless to blunder into, nothing at all. It seemed to be just a small cavern filled with life.

  Is this really a dungeon.

  Sigurd continued to explore the floor for about a quarter of an hour before he spotted it. Under one of the trees, a treasure chest, it was a similar colour to the wood and hidden in the roots of the tree.

  As he got closer, something felt off, Sigurd wasn’t sure what it was, but something about this was unsettling, the tree, the treasure. He paused, looking around. Nothing, no grasses shaking as of some predator preparing to leap, no suspicious patches of ground to fall through nor cracks in the rock above his head.

  Sighing, he moved forwards, pausing with each step.

  Nothing.

  With nothing else to do, he pushed aside some of the dangling branches with the axe head as he prepared to step finally step within the layer of branches.

  This was a mistake!

  The branches reeled back and the whole tree seemed to come alive. It whipped out, sending him sprawling, back to the floor. Thankfully out of its reach, Sigurd scrambled up, looking around quickly, nothing.

  Standing up, he looked at the tree, now just as still as before. This was something new! he had never heard of trees like this. Sure there were plant mobs, but they were more like animals when the dungeon was finished with them, giant plants that could swallow a man whole roaming around and blending in, mushrooms that hopped around, but a tree that came alive, odd!

  He was smiling as he thought about it, this was new, and he couldn’t help the excitement welling up within him. He was excited to delve further, this was great, new things to explore, he had originally given up delving because his team and he were weary of doing the same things day in day out, the deeper dungeons that had things they hadn’t seen were far too dangerous for such an average team and so they had given up, retired whilst still ahead.

  Returning his mind to the tree, he pondered the best way to approach it, eventually deciding to give it an early pruning.

  He stood, just out of reach, calmly hacking at the tree until it couldn’t get at him anymore. As expected, the chest was a little meagre, containing only a few low value coins that Sigurd quickly funnelled into a belt pouch. But he was happy with the loot nonetheless. It was loot after all.

  As he continued around the floor, he noticed a few more trees with treasure chests beneath them. Approaching the closest, he stopped just out of range, stepping forward to get it to try and attack, before stepping out of range and swinging his axe. Or that is what he would have been doing if it had responded and tried to attack. Alas it didn’t. He took another step forwards and then another.

  Another.

  Another, and now he was close enough to touch the tree, he gave it a quick slashing stroke before dancing back out of range.

  No response.

  A bit more probing with no response and Sigurd eventually concluded it was just a tree. He collected similarly meagre loot and moved on.

  Spying the exit for the floor he continued pushing though the undergrowth, pulling the plants out of the way, and forcing though the brush. He felt a few snags here and there as the foliage pulled at his clothes and body, but it didn’t stop him and soon he exited the grasses to stand just before the tree that loomed above the exit, surely this one was alive.

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  Idly Sigurd noticed he was bleeding in a fair few spots, on the exposed skin of his right arm and leg and around the joins between the greaves and leather cuisse which were left loose to aid in mobility.

  Wiping it up with a cloth from his bag, Sigurd focused and in much the same way as before dismantled the tree that tried to throttle him, before ducking beneath the shortened branches, taking the treasure and exiting upon the far side.

  Time for floor two, perhaps there would be danger there, floor one had been remarkably easy, and he suspected the dungeon wouldn’t give out another free shot, it had to recoup the mana lost at some point. Though is suspected the trees would catch a fair few beginners out once the dungeon became more well known.

  The stairs going down were made from the roots of the tree that he had just defeated. It was a nice touch he had to admit, clever. It fit the aesthetic of the room perfectly.

  Sigurd was significantly reticent of stepping onto the stairs, especially considering the trees were capable of moving, he was nervous that they would disappear from beneath him. Luckily Sigurd could look through the roots and see the rock that they were resting on.

  Sigurd already liked this dungeon, and he suspected that learning its depths would be a great deal of fun. As long as it got harder and more profitable, then he imagined that this could become a major part of the world’s economy. Because the one thing adventurers liked more than money, was adventure, hence the name, and this so far, was unique.

  Sigurd walked down and around, spiralling down about 15 metres before emerging from the side of the wall of the next floor. Floor two was similarly themed.

  The steps emerged from the side of a cavern even bigger than the last, and high up, like really high up. Below was a floor of foliage, the canopy of the tree tops, He took the next few steps down carefully, he really didn’t want to fall through the canopy to the floor below, not knowing how far that drop was, was playing with his mind. On one hand, he didn’t know how far the drop was and couldn’t see it, on the other he didn’t know if he would survive the fall. If he was betting, it would be that he wouldn’t.

  In front of him was a tree trunk that almost brushed the ceiling, the tree was several metres around and cut into its trunk was a small opening. When he got closer, he could see that it was a staircase, original.

  The stairs in the tree coiled down a long, long way, and at several points along the winding staircase there were paths that led out into the different layers of foliage. Sigurd peered out trying to follow the route, but he struggled to pick the path from amongst the greenery.

  No, he decided, he preferred the stability of the ground and so he continued down the tree in hopes of reaching the bottom. Give me firm ground under my boots any day he thought to himself.

  The staircase continued for a few more loops before it exited onto the floor. It was a bit darker than before, like a late afternoon summer as the sun begins to set and the shadows lengthen, distorting the shapes which cast them. The trees block out enough of the light from above the canopy that the floor looks as if it is laced in a mottled golden blanket.

  The ground itself was coated in a layer of dead leaves and twigs that had been compressed into a woody surface. It was an odd detail that stood out to Sigurd but one that did, for if he had been designing a dungeon, he would not have thought of the dead leaves from many past cycles and the ground would have been bare.

  Sigurd considered the many oddities with this dungeon and got the sinking feeling that perhaps there was a measure more intelligence to this one than the others he had been in.

  Stepping out onto the soft ground he whipped out his axe, expecting an attack, nothing came. It was quiet once again, as if the world had but for a moment forgotten him. It was an almost uneasy silence, unsettling and eerie. Nay it couldn’t last and as he looked around trying to get his bearings the sounds and sights and smells filtered in.

  Unlike the first floor, where he had entered from one side with the goal to get to the other, this time he had been dropped off in the centre of the floor with no idea in which direction to head first.

  Looking up he felt small, the trees themselves were huge towering monoliths that climbed up and out of view as their branches and leaves spread out to form the canopies he had walked upon. Their trunks several metres around, he struggled to take in their form in their entirety.

  Sigurd hoped the exit was on the ground, but had not discounted the possibility it was on one of the many canopy layers he had seen earlier. He dreaded that possibility. A half-dwarf had no place dancing among the tree-tops.

  On first examination, he couldn’t see any immediate life, though the signs were there. He could hear birds fluttering around, their wingbeats resounding in the quiet, the occasional snorting grunt echoed from somewhere off to his right and on the floor to his left, the ground had been disturbed.

  Sigurd thought it might have been a wolf paw print, but he wasn’t an expert, nonetheless he could see the distinct signs of the toes and claws. He would be going into this floor with the expectations of fighting wolves, something he had done many times though less frequently in dungeons themselves as opposed to the forests of the continent.

  The dungeon it seemed had finally introduced a predator, at last. Sigurd was looking forward to a fight, nothing got the heart racing quite like it.

  Further to the left, the soft tinkle of flowing water caught his ear, it was a slow, trickling stream. He made his way over to the stream figuring it was as good as any other point to start from. It was a small stream, perhaps a metre wide and fairly shallow as well, the water was completely clear, the surface appearing glasslike as it trickled over the light grey pebbles that made up the bottom. It was unusual to find such a clear stream in the outside world and it was yet another fact that made this dungeon so unusual, not that it had clear water but that it was set up in an almost idyllic way, as if in creating each floor an almost utopian aesthetic had been developed. Other dungeons Sigurd had delved in were always much more rough and ready, with narrow roughly hewn tunnels connecting into larger rooms and caverns.

  The woodland was peaceful, the breeze gentle, the trickling water and the sounds of the birds pleasant, the temperature and light levels perfect.

  It was a dungeon for fuck’s sake.

  Sigurd sighed, an illusionary paradise that would catch you unawares if you relaxed in its enchanting clutches.

  Since the stream itself held no clues, he decided to abandon it and set off exploring the woods on the upstream side. He encountered nothing much beside some small pawprints in the soft ground, smaller than before, perhaps a fox or a large rodent. Nothing threatening. Continuing to explore, he found a treasure chest with some more coins and a couple of ingots of iron. He thought it was iron and would have to test it back in Littlebrook but he was confident of his guess.

  Still no wolves though. He had been wandering for almost 30 minutes before he came across them. Enough time for his shoulders and eyes to begin to tire from being on guard so much. He had just rounded an especially large tree when he encountered them. At first only one attacked, jumping upon him from where it had hidden behind the great tree. Catching him in the front as he turned to face it.

  It scratched Sigurd lightly, the claws of its paws catching behind a strip of metal on the side of his breastplate and yanking it off, the impact knocked him off balance. The armour had taken most of the blow and though it was a bit mauled, nothing serious had broken.

  Recovering his balance Sigurd threw one nice looping swing from his axe, which bit into the wolfs’ neck and dispatched it. Seeing this, its packmates decided to jump into the fray, though too late to save the initial attacker.

  As he brought the axe up from the death dealing blow, a wolf managed to catch a bite on his forearm, the teeth closing around him, clamping around the metal of his gauntlet, and squeezing the arm tight, one of its canines skated off the steel surface and slipped into the leather, punching into his arm, drawing blood.

  He managed to shake off the wolf, wincing as he felt the fang lacerate his skin before disengaging. One swinging attack from his axe upon high, cleaved into its flesh, shearing through muscle and bone alike and taking off the attacker’s hind leg. Sigurd grinned like a madman, revelling in the battle as he heard it yelp from the pain. That was before he buried his axe in the poor monster’s head, dispatching it with ruthless efficiency before rolling over its now dead body to avoid a swipe from its packmate.

  Four left.

  It took a good ten minutes of careful, solid, fighting before Sigurd managed to kill them all. By the end of the fight, he wasn’t too bad off, having used up one health potion and received enough damage that his armour would need some minor repairs. All in all, it wasn’t too bad for his first fight in a while, and he felt he was doing pretty good. The wolves hadn’t proven too much of a challenge, just enough to get back in the saddle so to speak. And he’d earned enough from the pelts and the coins he had looted to cover replenish everything he had used so far and some.

  Wandering round the rest of the level, yielded nothing new except for a few more treasure chests with only slightly better loot than that of the first floor. He did spot what looked like some healing herbs on his wandering, he pocketed a few on his way.

  The oddest thing he had found so far had been the half-buried campsite, it looked like there had been other people here at some point, or at least that was what the dungeon wanted him to think, he struggled to imagine anyone having made it to the dungeon before him though.

  In the end he assumed they were just there for decoration, perhaps to aid adventurers in setting up a temporary camp for further explorations. Though why anyone would want to camp inside an active level, such a short distance inside was beyond him.

  With the floor pretty much explored, it was just about time to find the exit.

  He returned to the stream, locating it by sound as he could hear it from where he was, and this time followed it downstream.

  As he walked along the waterway, following it on its journey he was taken unawares by a big predator. It leaped down from one of the sky paths in the trees that overlooked the stream and landed on him, sending him crashing to the ground and rolling away, falling into the stream.

  Sigurd felt a deep gouge spring open in his arm and a crack from within, what he assumed to be a broken rib. Struggling to his feet in the water, he splashed around managing to gain his balance before it lunged at him again.

  Sigurd swung his axe upwards as it pounced, trying to twist sideways and step out of the way at the same time. His definitely broken rib sent a lance of pain through his chest, and he stumbled. Despite this the axe struck true, slicing through the jaw of the animal, a cat he could now see, and embedding itself in the skull, ending its life.

  The weight of the animal landed on Sigurd knocking him back into the water and muffling his face in its fur.

  Groaning, he sat up spluttering and spitting the wet fur from his mouth as he pushed the cat off him.

  However, just as he tried getting to his feet, a huge rush of water came crashing down the stream picking him up and sending him tumbling along and down. He was swept along, his focus only on holding onto his axe and trying not to breath in the water and before he knew it, he felt the ground disappear from beneath him and then he plummeted.

  Sigurd screamed, much to his embarrassment should anyone have heard him, and managed to rotate in mid-air enough, and just in time too, to see himself face plant into solid ground a good 30 metres below where he had fallen. His vision flickered as he tried to raise his head and then went black.