Dragon’s Womb

The battle was easily won.

The first to go was the hammer wielding warrior.

Its achilles was quickly sliced as Myor slid under their swing of the hammer. He followed up with five slashes to its back before finally beheading it.

“Tnel has a nice mallet but I wouldn’t trade this speed for that strength even on the darkest moons.”

Myor mocked his double’s poor choice of weapon as its head fell to the ground.

The undead sorceress sent three relatively large thorny vines that moved almost as fast as the speed of sound to make quick work of them but Tnel’s heavy hammer swings stopped it in its tracks.

It attempted to cast another spell but was stopped by three swift arrows to the head. Shanel’s aim was dead on.

“ A good sorceress would be more careful when choosing their spells because they’d know one poorly thought out cast could lead to death.”

Tnel called out the zombie’s poor choice of spell while sounding rather proud of a sorceress he knew as he did so.

It was over. Or it should’ve been.

The archer double had survived the holy spear and rose up, stabbing Shanel in the liver with an arrow faster than he could react. It then kicked itself into the air off of Shanel’s back using it as a pivot while readying a shot in its bow.

It was quickly stopped however. Stopped by something Shanel was ashamed of but his master insisted that he walked with it anyway. It made the art that Shanel’s master was obsessed with but Shanel himself was disgusted with far too easy.

Killing. He shot the zombie in the head with a flintlock pistol he pulled from a holster in his soaked greaves. The future of marksmanship was how his Master referred to it.

“A future severely lacking in elegance.” Shanel morbidly thought.

“If this is what I had to resort to in order to win, maybe you were the better marksman after all.”

Shanel admitted as he gazed down at the corpse, permanently immobilized by the bullet etched into its skull.

He allowed his back to hit a nearby wall in exhaustion as he held his wounded side. He didn’t pull out the arrow to prevent further breathing.

“I’ll hold. Take care of Mella and yourself first.” He discouraged Mystia who was staring worriedly at him from neglecting those in need of more urgent treatment. His breath was very jagged as he endured the pain.

“It’s over….right?” Myor questioned the situation as he looked around the hall. All the zombies seemed to be fully decommissioned.

“Either way let’s get out of here while we can! The town be damned! Sure I’m curious but we should come back another time when we are more…”

Tnel turned his eyes towards the exit, the way they came from as he again made the declaration to leave and come back.

“……prepared.” He struggled to peace together the last word of his sentence.

This was because the exit as he knew it had disappeared.

“……”

Silence again enveloped the hall as the realization collectively hit everyone still conscious.

“Let’s just take five while it’s still safe.” Tnel changed his request in light of this new dark discovery.

Everyone silently agreed with him as Myor decided to sit down releasing his grip on his shield and sword to join the rest of them.

This battle was far from the most physically exhausting one they had won, but the added stress of facing such an eerily familiar yet unfamiliar opponent added mountains of fatigue to each of them.

“I’ll set us up something to eat.” Tnel stated as he retrieved the camping kit he placed next to Mystia and Ymel behind the barricade.

There were frozen goblin fish jerky and enough wind tree rice for a group as big as theirs inside the camping kit they found in the broken carriage. It seemed edible as it was persevered by an incantation. How lucky they were that these cultists shared the same cuisine tastes as them.

They dined as they discussed.

Mystia’s presence was the first point of contention.

“I’m probably the most grateful for you being you being here Chama but with all you have on your plate I still gotta ask. Why?”

The slim faced sorceress now with her wounds healed and wrapped under her tattered blue robe inquired. She pulled the smoke she shared with Shanel from her purple afro relighting it by the makeshift stove as she did so.

“Well for starters, Medusa’s palace didn’t seem like it would’ve been that big of a hinderance. Here seemed like it would’ve been less than a hassle as well. All within my tolerance level I thought.” Mystia answered as she sat slanted, slowly dining on the windrice as she did so.

“Well… I guess that makes five of us.” Myor replied in a tone that seemed to understand Mystia’s thought process well enough to want to drop the issue entirely. He tended to be less argumentative when it came to Mystia.

Of the two others that had not spoken, Tnel seemed to have wanted to protest it further as he held a piercing gaze in Mystia’s direction but he eventually dropped it himself because of his distain for arguments.

Ymel leaned back enjoying her smoke too much to want to follow up and Shanel was too busy fixing his now messy golden man bun.

Ymel squeezed her way to the others after she noticed him. She knelt behind him to help fix his hair. She stretched out to pass him the smoke as she prepared to braid his hair.

“Are we okay?” He asked as he caressed her bandaged forearm. She fidgeted slightly hearing his voice as the whispers were now almost deafening. She had uttered the translator’s name far too much in the earlier battle. The pain from the counter thorn enchantment slightly distracted her from the whispers.

“I should be asking you that. I heard a gunshot earlier.” Shanel winced at her retort, as he caught a stiff whiff of the smoke. His eyes distant but his body tightened as if he was bracing for something.

“For better or worse, I didn’t miss,” He said in an exhausted exhale as he released the smoke from his nose, “but you thought right. It’s gonna be a long night.”

“So, what now?” He mumbled with the ponytail holder also in his mouth as Ymel seemed to be transforming his hairstyle.

“Well the undead issue seems to be mostly resolved even though we couldn’t get a hold of the necromancer. Whatever party trick it pulled to have the undead mirror us is best answered from their own lips. They probably went further into the dungeon to reconvene. With bodies as mangled as those though, they probably wouldn’t have good material to work with anyway. I dosed them with holy water just to make sure.” Mystia flexed her bandaged neck as she stared at the undead corpses heaped a few feet behind them.

The smoke from burning the corpses would probably suffocate them in this confined space so this was the safest option.

“….So the only way now is forward.” Tnel hesitated to speak as he noticed her neck. He also eyed Ymel’s bandages as she laid there smoking without a care. Concern ran a heavy but silent river within him.

Everyone once again readied themselves to venture deeper as they neared the end of the meal and all relevant wounds were tended to.

Some dungeons present themselves as elaborate puzzles with the answers to what has been seen thus far, waiting at the very end.

The more they thought about what could be the reason behind all this, the more frightening the assumptions they’d make would become. Making all the harder to make that step forward.

As they paced themselves through the hallway that was rife with death moments ago but now felt noticeably empty, they came face to face with another stairway. Unlike the hallway they were in, this stairway was already pre lit with the curvature indicating that it was spiraling by design.

“Wind before the wings.”

Shanel chuckled to himself at Myor’s attempt to nudge at him with his own words. “What a child.”

He slowly made his way down as he murmured to himself. Shanel was known to have the quickest reaction speed in the group so having him take the lead seemed optimal in the face of such unfamiliarity.

Their weariness stuck closely with them keeping the group on high alert until they arrived at the very end of the stairway.

As they slowly stretched themselves across the expanse with everyone exiting the stairway, it dawned on them after a brief moment of examination.

“No way. Is this….the dragon room?” Myor had always been the first to voice his bewilderment.

“ Of all the impossibilities we’ve faced today, I find this the hardest to stomach. To think my timetable could’ve been this wrong. Even if we were to entertain the idea that our route-the only immediately apparent one was the fastest, this is still utterly absurd.” Ymel followed suite voicing her own disorientation.

Traversing even the smallest of dungeons is a task that would take two days at best. The scale of them, even for the strongest of parties,has never before presented a challenge that could be surmounted in a mere couple of hours.

“To think that we’d be here even faster if we hadn’t rested. Insane.” Shanel didn’t hesitate to share his own bewilderment as well.

“Now hold on. We can’t be so quick to jump to conclusions. For one,despite the size of this place I’m not seeing any signs of a dragon whatsoever.” Mystia interjected warning the party to not become absorbed in mere conjecture.

“Only one way to know for sure.” Tnel was being unusually stern as he marched forward towards the center of the arena sized rectangular room for concrete proof.

Something that had been a staple of every dragon room they had encountered in their travels.

“Yeah…there’s no doubt. This is it.” Tnel’s announcement felt nervously strained as he stumbled upon undeniable evidence.

A sigil engraved into the floors depicting the most stereotypical form the winged monstrosity can take.

Shanel tapped Tnel by the shoulder in what could only be a signal to brace for combat. With full faith in his comrade’s judgment, he quickly fell back moving to recreate the barricade from earlier.

With the rear guard now properly set up behind them, Shanel with Myor alongside him stood face to face with the darkness before them.

The room was filled with lanterns that illuminated the room by themselves as the party progressed further down the arena. This barely fazed them as dragon rooms tended have this performative element to them.

“The wind is behind us now. You ready?”

“Do I have a choice?”

Myor’s sarcastic remark was the signal for the two members of the vanguard to press forward into the darkness with only the enchanted gold on their armaments to guide them.

The two slowly progressed assuming battle stances with Myor’s breath by his blade and Shanel’s eyes narrowed and ready to catch even the slightest of fidgets.

This happened until they were stopped in their tracks. They had finally happened upon it.

“WHAT THE HELL?!” It summoned a gut reaction from the both of them. Their synchronized confusion reverberated through the arena.

Tnel and the others twitched as the sound caught their ears. They listened on for the initiating sounds of combat to follow, but they never did.

“Guys? What happened?” Tnel pressed forward in full panic mode as his mind went to the worst chasing after the two that had walked out of view.

Mystia and Ymel couldn’t resist the tension subsequently breaking formation to chase behind Tnel’s charge.

Tnel and the others quickly caught up to the two men that had left him behind. The two stood frozen in place and by their feet, the source of their shock.

A dragon, as it obeyed all the typical structural conformities they were accustomed to. The issue however, was its state.

Only bones. It had rotted to the point where it had consumed its flesh. By all means, they stared upon a corpse.

The dragon had long since died. Yet the dungeon still stood. Previously undiscovered until the party wondered into it.

This was well within the realms of impossibility. The dragon’s death met the near instantaneous collapse of a dungeon with the party and their findings being teleported as soon as the creature’s death had been confirmed.

Something sounding similar to a huge washbasin’s worth of water then splashed onto the floors behind them giving sound once more to their shock.

They had all turned to confirm the source and were buried several layers deep shock.

It was Mystia. A large washbasin worth of blood was ejected from her very being. Based on the blood trail, the source traced itself up from the helm of her garb.

It was her womb. Her stomach indicating her pregnancy had disappeared completely. Her previous state of being had been vetoed almost instantaneously.

“Wha-“

She was utterly dumbfounded left without words to compute her shock.

Not even a scream was uttered from the others. The sight of their priest drenched in her own blood with her face branded inhumanely with dread robbed their body of any motion.

So pitiable that this horrific sight would be the last thing the party would ever bear witness to.

Dungeons are sometimes called Dragon Nests. This is because much like a bird’s nest it is fashioned after the dragon’s own needs and likeliness.