Chapter 6: Level Three
As always, Simon’s first steps down the rickety wooden stairs were tentative, but once he was in the basement he had no trouble dealing with the rats. That he even had to bother was annoying, “Any good game designer would just let you skip this part after you beat it,” he grumbled to himself as he picked through a couple of the boxes nearest the wall to see if they might be hiding a secret passage. All they were holding were potatoes and what he thought might be turnips, not that he’d ever actually seen a turnip before.
He took the second floor slowly, cursing himself for forgetting the spear he’d meant to bring to make searching for pressure plates easier. The bats still showed up, but this time without the fear of surprise that he’d had to deal with last time they were mostly just an annoyance. His only real fear was being crushed to death or falling in that damned pit again. During his search he noted that even though the layout was slightly different this time, the traps were all pretty much the same as what they’d been last time. He wondered if that would hold true for every other level of the dungeon. If every time he had to redo a floor it would have the same monsters but a slightly different layout that would make things pretty easy.
It took two full torches to work his way past all the traps without taking any chances, but this time Simon was rewarded by the sight of another set of stairs leading down to the next floor. “Child’s play,” Simon told himself, smiling even though he still felt nervous. He might have made it look easy this time, but thinking about those spikes still put him back at the edge of panic. He drew his sword as he descended the stairs, trying to be ready for whatever nasty surprise awaited him next.
The next floor turned out to be a cave. It was a moist limestone formation that didn’t seem to have much standing water at least. Frequent drops fell from the ceiling to some of the larger stalagmites that dotted the floor, but it was manageable enough. It looked like the biggest hazard here would be the terribly uneven floor, which was full of rock formations that made the shadows from his torch dance wildly. After he got used to that, it quickly became apparent that an even bigger problem would be the smell.
The whole place stunk. Not a little bit either - not like when he used to drive past the oil refinery on his way to work. It reeked of raw sewage and garbage so strongly that his first fight on this floor turned out to be controlling his own gag reflex. Maybe eating all that food right before coming to this part of the pit wasn’t a good idea, he chastised himself as he looked for someplace dry to sit down before settling on a large rock, giving him a chance to get used to the stench while he studied the room. Now that he was looking he could see bits of garbage and what was probably thoroughly chewed bones scattered around the floor. Clearly this was something’s lair, but he wasn’t sure what. It could have been anything from Orcs to Gnolls.
Not counting the stairs, which now had a closed door at the top of them, that he knew from experience wouldn’t allow him to go back up, it looked like the room had two exits, both of which seemed roughly equal. Not having any good way of determining which one was the right one, he headed out of the one where the trickle of water was leaving the cave. Downhill meant some sort of exit. He was sure of that from the D&D sessions he used to play with his friends.
As he went further down the passage the angle of the cave started to steepen, and he had to put his sword away just to keep a firm grip on the wall so he wouldn’t slide down any of the patches of moss or slime into the abyss. While he explored Simon kept a sharp eye open for claw marks or scorched walls - anything that could offer him a clue as to what might live down here, but he found none.
Instead he found a number of smaller trickles that slowly converged on the one he was following until the tiny stream had practically become an underground river. The further he went, the wider it got, until eventually he reached a bend in the tunnel where the river seemed to take up practically the whole floor. Looking at how fast the dark waters were moving, he decided that swimming it was out of the question, but it looked like maybe the other bank of the river would be walkable for a bit further, if he could cross it somehow, and the air was much less foul here than it had been where he started, so that had to mean he was headed the right way, right?
Reluctantly Simon lit his third torch and backtracked a few hundred feet until he found a spot that was narrow enough that he thought he could jump across it. He backed up, took a running start, and then jumped. The jump was high enough, and long enough, even in the armor he was wearing, but when he landed he slipped on some algae growing on the bank of the river, which sent him splashing and flailing into the water. The only thing he could do in that moment was toss the torch on the bank before it was snuffed out, giving him at least a little light to watch for handholds as he tried desperately to fight the current. It was no good though. All of the handholds were covered in slime, and within seconds he was dragged well out of his meager light as he was swept deeper into the depths.