Monster party Book Seven: There's some things you're never gonna help or change, but hunger is something we can turn around!

Chapter Thirteen: We were skulking through this dungeon...

"Wahrg what are you doing?" Alexander couldn't help but ask at the sight before him.

"Wahrg carrying. Wahrg good at carrying!" The mongrelman answered, with almost childlike chipperness.

At the moment Wahrg was holding one large bag in either hand, and there was a third tied to his back with rope.

Alexander could have left the first two go unremarked upon, but that third one, it was as if Wahrg was a beast of burden rather than a person….

"Do you propose to simply leave my baggage laying around for any brigand or beast to poke through?" Blustered Bolsh.

Finding that the cleric was the one responsible for Wahrg's current overburdened state didn't surprise Alexander in the least.

At first.

Then he thought about it a little bit more and a few things didn't add up.

"I understand that you might have brought a great many things with you… but how exactly did you bring it out with you in the first place? Wahrg spent most of yesterday with us..." The silver haired man inquired.

He somehow doubted that the priests had gotten a mongrelmen group to carry their baggage train all the way from Zhukar, or if they had (which would raise its own problems) why weren't those particular mongrelmen still carrying it?

"We road out here in a carriage, but then the great Zhakata laid claim to it for his own needs." Bolsh insisted.

Alexander was about to raise the obvious objection to that statement but someone else chose to speak up first.

"Zhakata!" A high pitched voice giggled, as from over a nearby hill a carriage suddenly appeared.

There were no horses hitched to it, and yet somehow the carriage had managed to roll its way up to the top of a hill.

Alexander wished he could have been surprised about that, he really did.

"Stand back." The silver haired man advised as he drew Wolf Claw from its sheath.

"Zhakata!" Cried out the carriage as it started to roll downhill towards them, gaining speed with every passing moment.

It was headed (with complete and utter unpredictability) towards Alexander clearly intending to run him down.

Alexander Diamondclaw quickly separated himself from the other two in order to make sure that no one (not even Bolsh) ended up getting harmed by the animator imbued carriage.

"Zhakata!" It declared one final time as it closed within ten feet.

At the last moment Alexander swung aside and thrust out with Wolf Claw. The blade slid neatly in between the spokes of a carriage wheel, at which point Alexander didn't even bother trying to hold it.

The animator seemed to grant the wooden wheels unnaturally resilience because Wolf Claw failed to slice them apart.

Which did the animator precious little good, since it couldn't make the wheels strong enough in order to break through Alexander's mystical blade.

As Callan Wright was fond of saying, there are few things more deadly in the world than something that had been moving very fast coming to an abrupt stop, be it a bullet impacting against its target, or a man falling off a cliff.

A wagon having one of its wheels suddenly getting jammed fared little better. The entire vehicle flipped over, the carriage ripped itself in half, and as tradition demanded, a single wheel (it wasn't even the one that Alexander had jammed Wolf Claw into) rolled forlornly away from the wreck.

"Was that your carriage?" Alexander asked with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders as he retrieved Wolf Claw and returned it to its sheath.

"Yes…." Bolsh reluctantly admitted as he examined the now thoroughly wrecked vehicle.

It probably said bad things about Alexander in the priest's eyes that a carriage shouting his gods name had singled him out to attack. Alexander didn't especially care at the moment.

"Well, since I ended up wrecking it, let me do what I can to help." He offered before promptly taking the bags from Wahrg's hands.

In theory he could have just gotten Devi to use her bag of holding to store the baggage… but somehow Alexander doubted if Bolsh would accept, and besides, he didn't especially want to intermix Bolsh's belongings with his own.

That, and Alexander Diamondclaw was pretty good at carrying also.

XXX XXX XXX

So it was that the group struck out through the desert. Alexander carried as much baggage as he could, even allowing more of the it to be tied to his own back with some of Devi's rope. James carried one bag, and even Madar decided to carry another (smaller) one himself.

Florence meanwhile provided her magical protection against the heat (to the other adventures and mongrelmen, she trusted that the priests could look after themselves in such matters) as well as magically summoned water for those who needed it.

With such aid the patchwork group was able to make surprisingly quick progress considering that they were moving through the desert on foot.

With the priests leading the way eventually a strong breeze blew them southward into the cold wastes, scouring them with sand and girt. Ahead seemed to lie only frustration, a canyon with no obvious exits.

As Alexander, James, and Mirri squinted at the darkening cliffs, they detected something ivory white huddled at the base like an ancient tomb.

The structure was squat and broken, rising from the stony floor of the plain. Cracked eight feet tall shards formed a toothy fence, barring strangers from this ruin, though several lay toppled and shattered on the rocky soil.

An archway pierced the wall and a yellow path lead through it to the building's only visible entrance… a gargantuan, monstrous skull. The tips of its menacing canines sunk into the ground like fangs into soft flesh where they formed another archway leading into the structure's dark interior. A faint moaning sound began to emerge as the sand scrapped against their flesh.

"Well… that looks friendly." Cal commented, once the alchemist had gotten a chance to take a good long look at the building.

"It looks every bit as friendly as I expected it to." Devi countered, taking a moment to run a blue gloved hand along the length of her flail.

Alexander turned around and waved his hands warningly at the band of mongrelmen and priests.

"I am an adventurer by trade, and this is what we in the adventuring business would call a 'dungeon'. There are going to be monsters inside, there are going to be traps. There will be significant amounts of peril.

None of you are to go into any room that we haven't already announced as clear, otherwise you're going to either get yourselves killed because we aren't there to protect you, or possibly get us killed by making a fight more complicated than it needs to be. Are we perfectly clear on that point?" He demanded of all those traveling behind them.

The direct unflinching harshness of Alexander's voice seemed to pierce Bolsh's aura of smug self satisfaction and even the boorish priest nodded in meek agreement. Having limited his concerns to the things which would be intentionally trying to kill him (and those things intentionally designed to kill people like him) Alexander and his companions pressed forward.

The faint moaning only seemed to grow louder as they drew nearer, and beyond the broken fence lay desolation and death. The remains of who knew how many small creatures lay spread out before them in a field of bones that had been utterly bleached by the desert's sun.

Even more ominously there was a "clearish" path through the random mangled remains, a section of ground that instead covered only by the weather beaten crowns of human skulls.

"You know, this is morbid even me!" Mirri couldn't help but admit as her white boots tread upon the first of soon many crushed skulls.

The strange building's aura of menace only grew stronger as the adventures drew closer, but this was not the first time they'd been subjected to sensations of uncertain dread and doom. This was a place that decent people should never have needed to set foot, which was why Alexander Diamondclaw was ready to lead the way straight to its heart.

The entrance to the building was a gigantic skull fifteen feet tall if it was an inch. Impaled upon one of its tremendous canines was a human skeleton.

"James, check for traps." Alexander insisted, willing to let the werecat take the lead temporarily rather than risk suffering the same fate.

James reached into one of his red jacket's many pockets and produced a few good sized rocks. An expertly aimed throw sent one of them skipping across the skulls, and just past the oversized fangs. Ancient gears ground against one another and the teeth began to close, but with an almost glacial slowness.

It seemed that for once a death trap might not have been made quite durable enough to withstand the rigors of time, as this one's gears had clearly been half (or more likely three quartets) jammed by dust and dirt. With that immediate concern out of the way Alexander pressed on, wondering what fresh horror would be waiting for him.

Passing through the skull's mouth caused them to enter a hallway that stretched out into darkness and smelled like a crypt. What could be seen of the floor was carpeted with animal bones. Each step that Alexander took deeper in produced a loud crunching noise and made him grateful that he hadn't given away his extra pair of boots.

The only source of illumination were skull shaped sconces that glowed with a pallid blueish white light.

"From her bag of holding Devi produced a lantern, the tools to ignite it, and set about providing the others with a less macabre source of illumination. The hallway soon opened up into a large chamber bathed by an eerie blue glowing emanating from its very walls.

Spaced along the length of the room were colossal leg bones supporting the ceiling like columns. Beside each of its three doors, huge one-eyed skeletons (the creature's skulls were deformed in such a way that they had only a single large socket in the middle of their heads) towered. They wore ornate armor bristling with nasty barbs and stood erect, their mailed fists resting on the hilts of massive swords.

"Hello?" Mirri called out to the skeletons.

The ten foot tall skeletons didn't respond in the slightest.

The vampire began to slowly approach one of the trio, and when that failed to get a response she waved a hand back and forth in its face.

This still failed to yield any sort of action on the skeleton's part.

She took a step back away from the armored giant and tilted her head back towards her silver haired superior.

"Better safe than sorry?" She inquired with a smile slowly starting to spread across her face.

"Better safe than sorry." He agreed.

Mirri took a step back towards the skeleton, and then kicked it in the knee with every ounce of strength she had.

Bone shattered, and the rest of the skeleton (armor and all) promptly toppled over, at which point Mirri started stomping the rest of it into a fine white powder.

Even this direct sustained attack failed to rouse the two remaining skeletons to any sort of movement.

That made it easy for the adventurers to surround and smash them into an inoffensive mix of bone chips and powder, tossing their armor and weapons inside Devi's bag of holding. Nothing good ever came from leaving gigantic unmoving armored skeletons just standing around when you were exploring a dungeon, nothing.

With that obvious threat (or at least obvious possible future threat) deal with the six were now free to explore the room more thoroughly. In niches throughout the room stood tiny ivory figurines of exquisite workmanship and once Florence had used her magic to make sure that there weren't cursed they were added to Devi's bag of holding.

With the room secured and everything of obvious value obtained the next priority was determining where to go next. The room had three doors, one leading left, one right one seemingly into an alcove straight ahead (if slightly on the left), and another section of the hallway that just continued onwards.

Luckily there was a fairly simple way to making such decisions that at least took the randomness out of the matter.

"Left hand rule." Alexander insisted, seeing no reason to deviate from the group's standard dungeon clearing procedure.

While this building was ominous to say the least, it seemed willing to at least remained rooted in the realm of the physical and not spiral off into unknown eldritch locations.

The door on he left side of the chamber swung open easily enough and the adventures proceeded forward.

Curving around a corner the group found a that the hallway kept going, but also that there was a door on the right side of the hall. At Alexander's insistence James gave it a quick jiggle and found that it opened easily enough.

What they found inside made the room look as if it had once been a study, complete with armchair and fireplace. Now however, the armchair had stuffing pushing through its rotted covering. The walls were lined with shelves, many holding bizarre little items while the mantlepiece and fireplace were both carved with ornate, abstract designs.

"Zhakata the Provider must have been really easy going, do gods normally build temples with studies?" Cal couldn't help but ask, since Alexander has passed on Madar's words to the rest of the group.

"The Circle of Darkness might not know as much about this place as they think they do." Devi countered.

It certainly wouldn't have been the first time that a mysterious group had proven misinformed… assuming that they hadn't been purposefully misinforming the adventures instead.

"Whatever this building used to be, it… it feels like its been sucking the life out of the desert around it." Florence warned the others.

"Just to be clear, how much 'life sucking' is it doing? Because if you know any sort of magical spells to prevent that from happening, please cast them on me, now." Cal pleaded.

In the alchemist's book the phrase "life sucking" was never ever one that you wanted to hear used, it never lead to good places.

"It is only dangerous to weak and simple minded animals who lack the will to resist it. I think some of those skeletons we saw outside were of animals that came to this place, fell under its spell, and because of that influence decided to simply lay down and die. So long as you don't feel an overwhelming desire for death you're fine." The dryad reassured him.

Cal took a moment to sling Phoenix over his back and pat himself down.

"Lets see… still vaguely horrified at everything going on around here… still much rather leave this place if we had any kind of real choice… but hey if I'm afraid, that means I want to be alive right?" He reflected with a morose smile.

That worry dealt with, the group began to explore the study in greater detail.

The shelves were mostly filled with esoteric books on various subjects of little importance at the moment (such as "The Manual of Ivory Figurines") that were tossed into Devi's bag of holding on general principle. Knowledge wasn't just power, it was also the promise of profit once you found the right buyer.

As the group explored still further they came upon a strange door.

The others had all been made of wood, but this one had been constructed of brass and onyx with black metal fittings. It was also decorated with strange, angular runes and reeked strongly of death and decay.

Alexander didn't even bother ordering James to try the handle, there was a large metal padlock securing the door closed. Whatever was on the other side of it, someone had worked very very hard to keep it closed.

"This won't end well." Cal abruptly predicted.

"There are typically two kinds of things people work this hard to secure, treasure, and horrible monsters that want to kill people." Alexander reflected, while crossing his arms and observing the door more closely still looking for any obvious weak points.

"I'd bet platinum to peanuts its the second one." Cal worried.

"So we should just cross our fingers and hope really hard that it isn't going to break free and try to kill us the moment we get distracted by something else?" Mirri shot back, eager for a chance to spill a little blood, assuming whatever was on the other side of the door still had blood to be spilled, and had even possessed blood in the first place.

"Florence is this door magical..." Alexander asked the obvious question.

A quick cantrip later, she nodded her head.

"Dispel it." He insisted.

Florence got to work casting, and this time the spell craft required a great deal more effort on her part. Eventually however she seemed to be satisfied with the result and nodded to herself.

"That, that was near the limits of what I could pull off..." She warned Alexander and the others.

With the more mystical defenses defeated James got to work on the mundane lock. It was as well crafted as the magical defenses had been, but it could only hold out for so long before the tumblers aligned and the lock clicked open.

The werecat gave the door a gentle push, and then jumped back, ready for whatever was on the other side to emerge.

Emerge it did.

The crooning erupted to near deafening intensity and a viscous foul smelling fluid gushed out. A writhing mass of immense slime covered worms pressed into the hall. Each one was as big as a man, and worse still each worm had a twisted humanoid face.

From the toothless maws of these maggots issued a haunting unnatural song. Their crawling bodies writhed across each other creating the incessant whispers and murmuring. Luckily despite their foul appearance, the creatures seemed as harmless as they were mindless, only interested in squirming about rather than attacking.

"Too ugly to live?" Mirri suggested.

"Too ugly to live." Alexander agreed.

He wasn't sure what these things were, but he was fairly certain that the world would be a better place without them, in fact he was fairly certain the monster's themselves would probably be willing to agree with him, had they been capable of intelligent conversation.

Wolf Claw slid free from its sheath and he got to business. The creature's blood made the smell even worse, but it was a small price to pay for ceasing their guttural cries and revolting squirming. Once they had all been slain the group moved back into the hallway and continued their circular path.

Like the previous door the next one they encountered didn't open at first touch, but it was only made of wood. Even more importantly, no ominous sounds echoed out from behind it, and it was lacking any sort of a lock. It was simply that the door was hinged to only swing inward and didn't do so at James' gentle push.

Even a more forceful shove from Alexander failed to move it.

"Want me to deal with it?" Florence offered after the silver haired man had slammed himself against the door half a dozen times without success.

At his nod she began to chant and wave her staff about. When she finished the door began to twist and writhe like a living thing, turning upon itself. It ripped itself to pieces and fell to the floor revealing that someone had stacked a pair of bunk-beds against the door as an impromptu barricade.

Without the door running interference for them these were easily shoved aside to reveal a room that seemed to have been half torn apart. In the most distant corner of the room writing tables and chair had been stacked haphazardly for some unknown purpose. Crouching at the base of this mess was a dead man, his face pale and skin cracked, but otherwise rather well preserved all things considered.

"Hey you awake?" Mirri called out to the dead body.

As dead bodies had a tendency (some people would insist not nearly a strong enough tendency) to, this one did nothing.

Mirri walked over and gave the dead man who was wearing a black robe with red trim a firm shaking.

"Hey, show some motivation! The worst part of your life, by which I mean all of it, is officially over! Lets see some vigor mortis!" She insisted in a loud and excessively chipper tone she'd doubtlessly picked up from James Firecat.

When the dead body still refused to react she relented and stood up sighing in exasperation.

"I guess there's no helping some people. Well at least that means he won't be needing that dagger he's holding." She pointed out, still grinning.

The dagger in question was clutched tightly in the dead man's hands, its blade engraved with many sigils.

"Florence is that dagger magical?" Alexander pressed, he wasn't in the habit of trusting weapons that were found still gripped tightly in their deceased owners hands, they might not have been able to let go even if they'd wanted to.

"Yes, its also cursed." The dryad answered after only a few seconds of chanting.

Deciding to leave the dagger alone, the group searched for other useful trinkets and nicknacks. There were various tomes and books on the walls, but they were all too battered and decayed to be worth even the space in Devi's bag of holding.

Which that done, the group headed back out into the hallway which soon ran into a dead ends. After a cursory search for hidden passages the six retraced their steps back to the large area where they had encountered the oversized skeletons.

This time they decided to explore the doors that seemed to lead into an alcove, wanting to find out what fresh new danger waited behind them.

The doors weren't locked and the room beyond seemed to be some sort of laboratory or place of healing. At the center of the room was a seven foot long table with leather straps. Around the tables were four benches, each large enough for a human sized figure to lie down upon.

A faint smell of rot hung in the air and along one wall were cages with the carcasses of long deceased animals. Though Florence was able to detect some form of enchantment upon the table and benches what exactly it did eluded the group, and none of them were especially interested in trying to find out when it didn't appear to be actively hostile.

Instead the group did a quick search for valuables (alas none to be found) and then retreated out of the room and headed down the hallway that lead straight ahead this time.

More doors presented themselves and more sights of considerable disinterest were revealed on the other side of them; a bedroom of some kind in one room, a kitchen whose food supplies had long ago either spoiled or been raided (either by animals or human bandits) in another.

Still a third room housed a collection of cages holding the remains of unidentifiable beasts, multiple tables with strong leather straps next to them, several cabinets holding surgical tools and charts of various internal organs which reminded the adventures unpleasantly of past times on a certain island realm. None of the tables in this room seemed to be large enough to have accommodated an actual human being… but you cold never be quite sure could you?

"This place is a temple?" James shuddered at the sight of some of the decayed corpse's which seemed to have a distinctly feline arraignment to their skeletons.

"I never thought I'd say this, but at least the Temple of Bastet felt like it could have been a temple. Like there was once something holy in there, here..." Mirri just let the comment drift off.

Her vampiric nature gave her a 'unique' relationship with holy places, in the sense that if they were made with good intent and well cared for then she wouldn't be able to enter into them without being explicitly invited first. If she was having a hard time finding something religious about this place, then there either wasn't something religious to be found, or ill intent had been involved at some point.

Whatever the history of this place, the group (having reached a dead end) returned back to the original large chamber and decided to head in the one direction that they had not yet gone, right.

This brought them into a tremendous library Bookcases lined every inch of wall space that could be seen, each shelf laden with scrolls, tomes, and more.

Alas, the treasure trove of knowledge was rendered somewhat repulsive by a jumble of bones piled in one corner. Trying to take his mind off the sight, James reached out for one of the books at random, but Mirri slapped his hand away and grabbed hold of them to keep them occupied.

"James, when you're in a big imposing library, you don' touch the books until we've done a proper search for traps." She insisted firmly.

"Think we should deal with those bones?" Devi asked reaching a hand into her bag of holding.

"Oh I would be happy to!" Cal agreed, ready to try and put a stop to that particular threat before it could possibly get any momentum behind it.

He began to reach into Devi's bag of holding, wanting to see what Devi had in mind. What he found was something a bit too heavy for him to be able to pull out. After a few awkward tugs he gave up and instead settled for motioning towards James and Mirri.

"A little help?" He asked awkwardly.

James reached into the bag of holding and with no difficulty at all pulled out a sledgehammer.

Mirri did likewise, a smile slowly starting to creep across her face.

"You know, its not quite as much fun as fighting something that actually bleeds, but if you're gonna kill something that doesn't, at least we can kill it really hard!" She announced proudly.

She gave her sledgehammer a mighty swing and powder and bone chips flew through the air. James' swing was a bit less enthusiastic, but he was no less determined to pound the bones into dust before they got a chance to harm him or any of his friends.

Several powerful blows made sure that the bones wouldn't be capable of harming anyone, ever. Now that the obvious dangers had been dealt with, it was time to look for the less obvious ones.

"Florence what in here is magical?" Alexander requested of his dryad companion.

She waved her hands and did some more chanting.

Then began to sort through a pile of scrolls, gently moving them aside in order to reveal a large well preserved book.

"This one was magical. Given how it looks a lot like a wizards spell book we should probably give it a wide berth. Everything else is safe to take." She explained.

Which was why they took everything else.

As the group was busily shoving texts into Devi's bag of holding, none of them noticed how the few scraps of bone still large enough to be visible were wobbling back and forth on the ground vainly trying to join together.

With that bounty collected, the group focused on a set of stairs leading downwards that brought them to another dark hallway. This one ended in a foot bridge stretching across a huge pit. So great was the pit's size and the pervading darkness that it was impossible to tell how far down it went.

James Firecat pulled another small rock from one of his jacket's pockets and tossed it over the edge into a darkness so deep even his keens could not penetrate it.

He then strained his ears to listen for a sound that never quite came.

Never quite came to his ears at least, keen as they were Mirri's were keener still.

"It landed. A long way down, but it landed. So whatever that is, it's not a portal to another dimension, or if it at least there's something solid for it land on there." She informed the group.

"That's great, not falling into an endless abyss with no choice but eventually put a bullet in my own head is one of my favorite pass times." Cal grumbled.

The bridge itself was made of stout bones held together by sinews.

"I'll go first, flying is easy for me." Mirri offered with a smug grin.

After all if the bridge gave out under her feet then she'd simply be able to turn into mist and float to safety.

She crossed it without difficulty, and only once she had completed her journey did Alexander follow in her footsteps.

"Florence, if it looks like any of us are in danger of falling, don't spare the magic." He insisted before heading out across the bridge.

One by one the group slowly passed across the bridge without incident and headed down yet another hallway.

This one ended in a huge door crafted of some sort of mysterious dark stone. Assuming you could call it a door rather than a 'wall' after looking at it more closely.

There was no trace of a nob or a lever with which to open it. The only thing that it might possibly open in some strange manner were furrows near the floor and ceiling which suggested mechanisms which might cause the door to roll out of the way… and a piece of the door that seemed to be missing.

Near its center was a small gap, just the right size for the black stone hat still dangled around Alexander Diamondclaw's neck.

"Well, this is going to suck." The silver haired man admitted candidly.

End Chapter Thirteen.

AN: No I'm not dead, I just went on vacation, well that and discovered Clash Royal. By the way do you guys enjoy these more in-depth dungeon crawling chapters or should I speed them up/focus on the most important things and not basically show our characters going room by room based on what the adventure book says they should find in each room and describing how they react to it?

Also don't be surprised if I re-upload this chapter tomorrow after taking the time to review it another time, but I wanted to accomplish something other than playing Clash Royal this weekend….