Take Charge

It didn’t take an intelligence-based caster to see that this supposed dungeoneering club was, dare Emmeran say, bogus. Not that he’d ever been a part of one before, but he had friends. And those friends had friends. And this did not sound anything like their experiences with dungeoneering clubs at other schools.

For starters, the basement certainly had been a choice. There were plenty of empty classrooms or study spaces to be reserved on a literal, actual university campus. Like his new friend Yara, the initial lack of club within the Lucent Hall’s basement had also confused Emmeran. But unlike Yara, he had simply chosen to do a little careful looking and a bit of reasoning.

He didn’t know for an absolute fact that this was a dungeon, but it felt like a good guess. Especially considering he did know why Obscurerra hadn’t had a dungeoneering team since ’49. The hallway they walked down now certainly screamed dungeon above anything else.

The flood of orange light from Yara holding the torch above and behind him met with another stronger light at the same time the hallway opened up into the deep and wide chamber of a dungeon’s floor.

Sitting dead center from the entryway, legs crossed and tail wagging idly like a cat’s, on top of a wooden crate, was a hellborn woman. Emmeran stopped in his tracks, only to be buffeted forward by Yara, not getting the memo. Fine, the hellborn was dressed in regular old university student clothes, but she was a hellborn in a dungeon, for all he knew…

“Oh, thank goodness.” Emmeran had never seen someone look so relieved in his life. “You’re here for dungeon club, right? I was starting to think this was some kind of prank or something.”

“Did you lift that trapdoor all by yourself?” Yara asked.

The hellborn shook her head. “It was open when I got here. And then it fell shut. Sorry.”

“But if none of us are the one who made the poster or called the meeting or whatever…” Yara stepped out from behind Emmeran to better try to gauge his expression. Not a chance.

“Advertising the time and date you plan to murder someone and sell their organs to necromancers is a pretty sloppy idea.”

The hellborn girl looked between them with a confused scowl.

“She’s very worried about that.” Emmeran was more than happy to explain. He may have only known Yara for the last several minutes, but she was already so easy to get a rise out of. Maybe he hoped to legitimize this club just for that. “She must have a hell of a liver.”

“We all answered an ad to meet in a double basement! You don’t know!”

“Did you really just say double basement?” Emmeran cracked a smirk. Briefly. The hinges of the trap door squeaked behind him.

Yara didn’t hear it. Clearly. “It’s not actually a dungeon. Who would build a school over top of a-”

“Shh!” Emmeran held up a finger. It didn’t matter. Whoever was coming down the hall was coming down the hall. And he wasn’t jumpy about it, unlike some people. It was just the principle of the thing. If they went and made this a thing, they’d want to listen to him and he’d want the opportunity to listen for things they might miss.

Keys jingled at the newcomer’s side, closer and closer until through the entryway came one of Obscurerra University’s janitors. He didn’t look at all surprised to see them. If anything, he looked disappointed.

“The flier said to meet in the basement and nobody was in the first basement-” Yara started her explanation at the exact same moment as the hellborn’s.

“We were told the dungeoneering club was going to meet down here. I almost thought it was a prank, but then they showed up-”

The janitor lifted his arm and pulled his sleeve up to reveal a wrist watch. The time only served to disappoint him further. “I really thought there’d be more of you by now…”

“You put out the fliers?” Emmeran asked. That certainly explained some things… But now the question was how a janitor benefitted from starting up a dungeoneering club? Emmeran could already think of a few reasons. Most weren’t exactly legal.

“Mage or rogue?” The janitor asked rather than answer the question.

Emmeran sighed. “Rogue.”

“Mage. Tank.” He pointed to the hellborn girl, then Yara. “Close enough.”

“Uhm.” The hellborn girl raised her hand. “Wynnie.”

Yara crossed her arms. “How come he gets a choice?”

“Because you’re probably here on a shield-maiden scholarship and she’s got horns and a tail.” The janitor pointed to each of them again.

Wynnie joined Yara in the cross armed disapproval, but she still didn’t say anything.

“I’m not, actually.” Yara grumbled.

But he wasn’t wrong about either of them was the thing. Emmeran caught himself inclined to like this guy, dubiously legal intentions of no. “Alright, so you’ve got a skeleton party. Then what?”

“You clear this dungeon.” He said it so matter-of-factly. Of course they could and would clear it. Of course, this was a dungeon.

“But, like… Why?” Wynnie asked. “I mean, I know why. But why is it here?”

“What’d you think dungeoneering practice entailed? You want to clear a dungeon, you practice clearing a dungeon.”

“So it’s like a practice dungeon?”

“Something like that.”

Emmeran let the girls ask their questions, keeping his focus on the janitor and his answers. ‘Cutton’ the small name badge on his chest read. It didn’t mean anything to Emmeran, so at least the man wasn’t notorious for anything. But his answers were shoddy at best.

You couldn’t just declare any old ruin - which this probably was - a dungeon. They needed a core, something to keep regenerating monsters and magical traps. And a dungeon core needed to be maintained by someone, unless it was a feral dungeon, but you didn’t compete in a feral dungeon. At best, Emmeran imagined they’d be dealing with the barren halls of what once was the university’s practice dungeon.

“How do we start?”

Cutton pulled a crowbar from his tool belt and tossed it to Emmeran. “Open the crate.”