Chrysalis

It was strange to be able to smell death. It seemed like the sort of thing that shouldn’t have a smell. Sure, things like decay and rot, they had a distinct scent, an extremely potent one, but those were distinct from death itself. A function of death, in a way. When a person died in front of you, or around you, there wasn’t a discernible odour, as far as Jern could tell. It wasn’t like the soul leaving the body was something his nose could detect.

Yet, as he stood on the precipice of the second stratum of the Dungeon, he could smell death.

He didn’t like it.

“It’s so cold,” Alis shivered as she stood by his side, looking down into the slowly stirring darkness.

“It’s going to be colder once we get down there,” he said.

“I don’t want to think about it. At least it’s supposed to get warmer once we reach the third.”

From what he’d heard, Jern wasn’t confident she would enjoy that heat much more than the cold. He’d conversed with a few ants from the next two layers, and it seemed to him that neither were all that hospitable. Only when they reached the fourth would they find a climate they would consider suitaboe for life.

“I never thought I’d be standing here,” he noted aloud.

Alis looked at him, and then back down the sharply sloped tunnel. The border between the first and second lay before them, a sharp border in the Dungeon. To both of them, it looked like a cloud of ink that revolved almost imperceptibly, a dark pond he could toss a stone into. After a moment, he shrugged, picked up a small shard of rock and lobbed it forward, gently, just a couple of metres.

As it fell into the ‘pond’, the flat surface didn’t ripple, it wasn’t disturbed in any way, and the sound of the rock hitting the tunnel floor reached him a second later, muffled.

“What did you do that for?” Alis asked.

“I was curious,” Jern defended himself.

some nasty shadow beast lunges up out of there and rips your head off?”

she was, but decided against it at the last minute. Alis didn’t particularly enjoy being reminded

her. “Beyn told us we shouldn’t

“Good idea.”

far away, constructed in a large cavern formed from the intersection of multiple tunnels. A common phenomenon, he was told. Passages between strata were much rarer than regular

them at a time, and the ants swept the surrounding Dungeon on a never ending cycle. Even so, the effects of the wave were impossible to ignore. Monsters would burst out of the ground inside the camp at all hours;

they’d been doing so much fighting recently. Pretty much everyone was getting used to swinging some sort of weapon

Even the old ladies.

way towards the back of the camp, where it butted against the cavern wall. They found Beyn not far away, talking with a large group by

here for at least a week,” Beyn insisted. “Your devotion is to your credit, Sister Myra, but I will not have members

demanded. “Everyone is certain our lack of symptoms can be

from much harm, of that I have no doubt,” Beyn agreed, “but for other trials, we are expected to carry the burdens ourselves. The mana thickens precipitously as we descend, and were we to advance to the Shadow Sea without tempering ourselves, then many of us would falter. It takes time, time we can

she much agreed with him until his final words. Perhaps she liked the idea of reflection and meditation since it sounded holy enough for her liking. She thanked the priest for his time and moved away,

young pilgrims approached

Alis and Jern,

father,” Alis gushed. “We were just outside the camp looking at the tunnel down.

priest looked grave and

I’m afraid we must. Even more may be necessary, though I hope that isn’t the case. The devotion of these people burns strong, and I would hate to force them to delay on their holy journey. Dungeon sickness is a

large space from the cavern wall and created a low-mana zone within. All of them had been expected to spend time inside, slowly letting the

and I are probably due to

cover it with a cough, not wanting to appear difficult in front of the

Class and I thought I