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     Dungeon of Crawling.

     For Toya

     By Psudo Argyraspides

     “Arst thou certain that here beith the goal of our quest, fair rogue?” The party’s bard said, adopting the eloquent, courtly speech that was often to be expected in the high halls and noble houses of the local kingdom, which, like so many adventurers, they had been hired out in the defense of, unique skills and talents being put to use where raw muscle would often fail.

     “Matteo, we told you to stop talking like that,” Toya, the rogue in question, said, his black wolf tail twitching as he polished the blade of one of his knives, “And yes, I’m sure. When have I ever not been sure about something like this?”

     “Calm down, both of you,” the hooded crow said from across their morning campfire, standing to assert himself over the bickering wolf and raccoon, “I’ll take Toya’s word for it. If he says that’s the place, and there’s no traps, then we go on it until we find something better.”

     “Hey, I thought it was funny…” Farix said, the group’s mage perking up as he poked at the local fish they’d caught, and were presently frying over a magical fire that the skunk was maintaining in place of a real one, “Besides, I’ll need to double check this place when we get there, anyway. This is a faerie we’re dealing with, and they don’t tend to be the sort that uses conventional traps.”

     Toya, the rogue, hmphed impatiently, looking again at the fish they’d caught. Every new adventure, it was always the same. Toya claimed he could sniff out magical traps, and Farix refuted him. “So what’s this guy even doing here? Kidnapping villagers and dragging them off to some old ruined temple in the middle of nowhere?” Toya asked. Typically, taking down evil maniacs like this was easier if you could guess how they thought.

     “Got bored of living forever?” Matteo suggested, his typical upbeat demeanor giving some level of comfort to the otherwise miserable day. A week ago, when they’d set off from the nearest duchy and into the surrounding countryside looking for signs of the faerie’s activities, it had been late autumn, but then winter had hit the group like a ton of bricks. Just the previous night they’d gotten two feet of snow, and the cold, while easily put up with by Toya and Matteo, both of whom had winter coats of fur, Farix was from warmer climates, and birds, like Anzu, typically migrated.

     “Alright, everyone, pack up camp and move out. Farix, you’re in front. You know the drill,” Anzu said, a bit more vocal than he normally was because of the uncomfortable climate. The ruins in question where the creature they’d been sent to kill had set up shop were some half a mile distant, a brisk walk by adventurer standards, and a relic from ages past. It had been a fortress, once, but now lay as a heap of crumbled stone bricks, wooden struts scavenged by local farmers for barn braces. There was, however, a tunnel that led deep under the keep, only recently excavated, and by magical means no less. The party ate their breakfast as they walked, and, soon enough, the snow-capped trees parted, revealing the long, cobblestone road which led up to the hilltop fortress that was their destination.

     “Huh, it looked gloomier last night,” Toya said, and, looking to brighten the spirit of things, Matteo strung his lyre and struck up an improvised chantry that made little sense when thought about, but was upbeat enough to raise the spirits of the party, even with the knowledge that they were all going into imminent danger.

     “No magical traps that I can sense…” Farix said, flipping on a fairly new spell he’d studied up on and prepared for just this mission in specific. Fae magic was some of the most unusual kind, and, far different from his own elemental spells, worked by creating tiny magical knots, referred to as bindings, and using them creatively to do everything from render themselves invisible, manipulate the senses of others, shapeshift, or move small amounts of natural substances. The spell the mage cast was intended to change his magical sight somewhat, and, hopefully, let him spy any magical traps that they may have set to ward off just these sorts of visitors. “Nope, I’ve got nothing. It’s safe.”

     “Lazy? Or does he have something up his sleeve?” Toya commented, casually climbing one of the turrets of the castle and walking along the crumbling curtain wall. It gave him a nice aerial view, and, if anyone should try to ambush them, he could drop on them from above.

     “Luring us inside, more likely,” Anzu said, dry as usual, and examined the bolted door that led down into the underground portion of the keep. “Toya? Can you get this open quietly?”

     “Already did!” The wolf said, chuckling a bit to himself, and jumped nimbly down onto a pile of rubble, “Like I said, scouted the whole place last night. No traps, magical or otherwise.”

     “And what if there had been?” The heavily armored crow said, his feathers fluffing up somewhat, “Know what? Never mind, let’s just get going. I’ll take point this time. Farix? Watch my back. If things look fishy, tell me and we’ll stop. How do our supplies look?”

     “Three days food and water, last time I counted,” Farix said, adjusting one of the packs that they were all sharing out between them, “We can probably find water in there, if we need it. I’ll set magical markers so we can find our way out again if we have to.”

     Anzu nodded silently in agreement, then, turning to face the eerie darkness of the damp cavern under the frozen landscape, stepped inside, not bothering with a torch since he knew Farix would light up the oakwood staff he always carried once they got a few more yards inside.

     Shortly afterward, the group of them moved out of the original part of the excavated fortress, which, done by hand as it likely had been, was only a few underground rooms for storage and an emergency escape tunnel, long since collapsed, and into the much more devious area of the dungeon, the one that had been personally excavated by the faerie himself.

     “These look like they were moved by earth magic,” Farix commented, “You know, mortal stuff. Not faerie bindings…” He took a moment to think that over, the implications were uncomfortable.

     “What’s that mean?” Anzu asked in his normal, no-nonsense tone, and looked back at the skunk, “Most of us don’t speak mage.”

     “Right, right, sorry…” Farix said, scratching behind his head, “It’s… basically… Magic has lots and lots of branches, right? It’s all the same stuff, and things overlap, but, pretty well, everyone stays in their own branch. I do elemental magic, that has its ups and downs. He does faerie magic, which has its own ups and downs. The problem is… they don’t mix. Either he’s not working alone, or he can use both mortal magic and fae magic… Which they’re not supposed to be able to do.”

     “How bad is it,” the crow asked, getting to the heart of the matter in a flash, and asking the question that was on everyone’s mind.

     “Erm… Not bad, exactly,” Farix said, trying again to explain, “It’s like… trying to be a stealthy warrior, or a bard that can practice magecraft… It can be done, but you’ll only be half as effective at either task… Still, it complicates things. Let me try something…”

     Awaiting the mage’s all-clear, a must in these sorts of situations, the group waited in their typical modes. Matteo played a simple tune to put everyone more at ease, Toya made to hide his apprehension, Anzu remained stony as ever, and Farix concentrated.

     Switching through all the magical spectra he knew, despite the energy it cost him, Farix blinked with surprise when he tried his normal, elemental magic, and saw several dozen normal enchantments woven into the rock. He couldn’t tell their purpose, but he knew they were there.

     “Proceed with caution,” the skunk said timidly, and, taking the lead, had the group follow in his footsteps to avoid as many of them as they could. Soon, the path split. Farix set a magical marker and took the right rout. A few dozen paces later, it split again, this time into three, rather than two.

     “Right again?” Matteo said cheerily, using a piece of chalk to mark the inside of the wall for extra safety. They went right again, and in every break thereafter. Soon, the tunnels seemed more neatly formed, 90 degree angles at the floors and ceilings and more smooth gradients downward. Eventually, they even saw masonry, albeit of the magical variety.

     “Heads up, I see a light ahead…” Toya informed the others, having fallen into step beside Farix at the front. Exchanging glances, the group moved more cautiously, Each alert for signs of danger and ready to fight at a moment’s notice. As they neared the lit cavern, the scent of freshly cooked food began to waft down the hallway towards them. Boiled leeks, roast chicken and suckling pig, fresh harvest corn, baked potatoes and spiced fish. After a week on a campaign diet of whatever they could scrounge up in the winter forest, and what meager harvest vegetables and salted meat that townspeople were willing to part with, the smells of properly baked food entraced every one of them, aside from Anzu, who lacked a satisfactory sense of smell.

     “Pull yourselves together,” the crow said, swatting each of their shoulders to get their attention, “Remember, faeries can mess with your perceptions of things. If anything acts suspiciously, and it probably will, don’t trust it.”

     “Woah, look at all of that!” Toya said, interrupting the crow’s warning as, finally, they passed out of the long, dank tunnel, and into a brightly lit cavern with vaulted ceilings that met far above. An ornamented chandelier hung above a mahogany table, rich and stacked high with a glorious, bountiful harvest fit for a royal feast.

     “Don’t touch ANY of it,” Anzu said firmly, looking around at his teammates, “This is obviously a trap. Farix, check the stuff out,” the crow said, nodding at the food, then took up a sentry position where he could see all three exits of the dining hall at once. Each led into darkness, including the one they’d just come from, and terminated at the compass points. Where a fourth door should have been, there was a warm hearth that heated the whole chamber, including the cool cobblestones under foot.

     Seeing as good of a base camp as they were likely to find, the group set about dropping their packs by the fire, Matteo quietly played on his lute, Farix examining the food, both magically and conventionally, for taint, enchantments or poison, of which he found, strangely, no trace. The whole room came to a still silence as the sound of someone chomping into an apple filled the chamber. Slowly, everyone looked at Toya, the wolf-rogue, who, in his general devil-may-care attitude, which, at times, bordered on recklessness, was holding two thirds of an apple, having torn off the rest of it in a single bite.

     “Whut?” The star-cheeked wolf said, then swallowed and took another bite. “Oh come on, don’t look at me like that… Nobody would fall for a trap that dumb, so he didn’t even bother trapping it! Come on, it’s just a cock tease. If there was anything there, Farix would have spotted it by now.”

     “That stuff is probably poisoned,” the crow said, glaring sternly at Toya, “You can be so… childish at times, you know that? Here we all are, putting ourselves in danger, and you go and start eating random fruit you found in a dungeon, inhabited by a creature we know next to nothing about?”

     “Hey, chill out,” Toya said, putting his hands up defensively, “But, since I’m already poisoned…” He gave a little flourish of his fingers, then, in quick succession, picked up two perfectly browned legs of chicken, a cob of corn dripping with salted butter, and a plate of bacon that, despite having been sitting there in front of them for nearly half an hour, was still piping hot and sizzling, and dug in, grinning at all the rest of them as the grease coated his muzzle. “Thith stuffths delithiouth, by the waith!”

     Everyone stared at him, intently looking at a point somewhere behind his head. At first, Toya thought they were looking at him, then, blinking up from his heaping plate of food plundered from the long table, he realized they were, in fact, looking past him, at something behind him.

     “What are you guys…” Was as far as the wolf got before a pitcher of honeyed wine found itself emptied over Toya’s head, the reddish purple liquid soaking through his lightly padded jerkin in seconds and dousing his fur without any hesitation. “What the HELL, guys?!” Toya said, storming to his feet and drawing a knife as he heard something giggling intently from behind him. Whirring around, Toya spotted a small nose sticking out from behind a stack of tropical fruit that had no business existing in this climate, and a wicked grin on its masked face. Turning the knife over in his hand to throw, Toya checked his aim as the thing leapt with nearly impossible agility up the stack of fruit and onto the chandelier some two yards vertically upwards, only to pull itself up onto the candle-adorned iron piece and blow a raspberry at the soaked and humiliated wolf. “I’m going to beat the snot out of that kid…”

     The child, who didn’t look more than one or two by the size of him, moved with agility and grace that made Toya look sloppy by comparison. It, for its gender wasn’t certain, giggled with a lazy, condescending attitude that annoyed the wolf to no end. It was clearly canine, but it was dressed head to toe in black linens, and wore a porcelain face mask under its hood. Climbing the chain that held up the chandelier, the pup took a pair of ripe tomates from where they were stashed inside his coat, and threw them both at Toya with impressive accuracy, even as the wolf made his way across the room. One spattered on the ground, a clean dodge, but the other, keenly aimed to hit him where he was most likely to move to avoid the first, caught him right between the eyes, turning Toya’s muzzle bright red with tomato guts.

     Another round of giggling followed, but, his frustration turning to anger, Toya was where he wanted to be: the chain’s anchor that held it up on the ceiling, and it didn’t take much to pry loose. “Take that, you little brat!” Toya said, bracing himself against the wall as he took the metal spike with both hands, then, pushing away, dragged it out of the wall, sending the chandelier, and the child, crashing downward with a scream.

     “Got him!” Someone said, it took the wolf a moment to recognize Ferix’s voice, and, turning around, he saw the mage holding up the masked pup by the hem of his hood, apparently having caught him in mid tumble. The fall had thrown him free, but, luckily for all involved, the chandelier had an auxiliary catch in the ceiling to prevent it from falling all the way, and it now stood only a foot or two off the table top, many of the candles having gone out.

     The little canine grunted and squirmed as he tried to escape the skunk’s grip, but Farix held firm as Toya approached, then, in very un-rogueish fashion, tripped over the hem of his pants and very nearly fell face-first into the cobblestones. “Yeep!” The wolf squeaked, regaining his balance a moment later, and, pulling at his belt, found it somewhat looser than he would have expected. “What the hell…?” Toya quickly counted the eyes on his belt, it hadn’t slipped at all… He tightened it casually, donning to think about it later. “Alright, you little prick. Mask-off,” he said, and, grabbing the molded, black porcelain face-piece with his sticky, wine-soaked paw, he pulled it off.

     “N-nuh!” The pup squealed, trying to hide his face behind his paws, but Toya had seen all he needed to, and the pup knew it. Right down to the snowy white ears, and the inky black star on his cheek, the incredulous rogue wolf found himself staring into his own face, minus a few decades, and then it disappeared into thin air, leaving behind the suddenly crumbling rogue costume it had been wearing, and leaving everyone in the room equal parts confused and unnerved.

     “That was… something,” Farix said, shaking his head in disbelief, then discarded the robes into the fire as they turned to dust. “Original, if nothing else… I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before.”

     The others agreed without question, and eyed the food on the table with suspicion. “Let’s take a rest for a few more minutes, give Toya some time to change, then move out. If anything else like that comes along, shoot first and ask questions later, alright everyone?” Again, the other three members of the group nodded. Anzu had always been the defacto leader when the four of them went adventuring together, his attitude and natural command qualities made him the obvious choice. Occasionally, as before, Toya liked to mess with him, but never in such a way that others were endangered, however much it frustrated the crow when he did.

     “I’m taking some of this food,” Toya said, opening his backpack and removing his bag of holding. It was a special little trinket he’d gotten from a previous adventure with the group, and one he cherished highly. The bag never changed size or weight, and could hold many times its size in equipment, making it ideal for a light-footed rogue like him. When the others glared at him again, he rolled his eyes between scooping up cooked chickens and stuffing them into the leather pouch, “Oh, come on. Do you guys really want to eat biscuit, trail mix, and salted pork this whole time? I’m not dead, so the stuff’s not poisoned.”

     Farix sighed, and shrugged, then joined the wolf in filling a similar magical pouch with food, “He’s right, you know… There’s nothing magical I can see about the stuff, and I’d be able to tell if Toya had been poisoned by now.”

     “Fine, just hurry up. We need to go…” The crow said with a sigh, shaking his head in discomfort at what had just happened. Soon enough, he had his wish, and, following the rightmost pathway, they left the food-filled dining hall behind, and returned to the gloomy, endless shadows of the underground maze.

     “Do you think he knows we’re here, yet?” Matteo asked calmly, looking around the group for an answer. Toya had, rather unhappily, left his soaked set of garments behind. His leathers dried quick enough, but the now sticky, drenched linens were useless to a rogue, and he’d had to put on his only spare set after using several cups of water from the table to wash the wine out of his fur.

     “Of course he does, he’s toying with us,” Toya said, not in all that great of a mood after having cherry wine dumped over him, “Trying to mess with our heads.”

     The bard just smiled his normal, optimistic grin, and started strumming his lute again, “Well, then let’s have a song, shall we? Oh, there once was a wolf and Toya was his name, hiding and thieving he dreamed was his fame, but avoiding wineskins was not his forte, and poor old Toya was soon all sogg-ay!”

     “Hey!” The wolf said, his exposed fur doubling in size as his face reddened, but the mage and the bard laughed in unison, and even the usually stern-faced crow broke a smile at their rogue’s expense, “That last rhyme was cheaper than dirt and you know it. Hmph.”

     A few more chuckles were had at the wolf’s expense, but, then, returning to the topic at hand, everyone concentrated, more so than before. The dungeon had shown that, while it wasn’t exactly dangerous, it wasn’t exactly safe, either. “Conjuring something physical like that, and controlling it from a distance, is no easy feat…” Farix explained as they walked for a full hour, always taking the right turn when it came to a crossroads, “So we’ve got to be careful. Just because it looks real, doesn’t mean it necessarily is real. Be on your guard.”

     As meaningless time ticked by in the tunnel, kept real only by Farix’s magical time piece, it became increasingly difficult for the adventurers to choke down the sensation of aimless wandering, even with their own personal bard’s joking, music and ever optimistic attitude. “Guy’s got a damn hive down here…” Toya said, the darkness seeming to close in around them, even with the bright light from their mage’s staff, so cramped did the quarters seem that they didn’t even immediately notice passing from the pale blackness of the tunnel, to the pale blackness of another chamber, this one so inky and dark that all the light Farix could summon without exhausting himself seemed to dissipate. It was almost palpable…

     “Where are we?” Anzu asked, as though any of the others had any explanation worth sharing, but, just as the silence was broken, a beam of light seemed to pop into existence from the ceiling far above, a noontime blade of sunlight, piercing the rock and earth between them and cutting the dark like butter. It illuminated, of all things, a cradle, gently rocking back and forth, some twenty yards away. The group paused for a moment, all eyes fixed on the one thing of interest that they could see, then, by unspoken consent, began walking in step towards it. “On your guard…”

     “W-waaahh… Waaaahhh!” The low, whimpering cries of a pup pierced the eerie silence, startling all four of them, before it was joined by another, then a third voice, each of them slightly different, somewhat familiar… And then the soft caw… caw… caw… of a young crow.

     “What the heck kind of dungeon is this?” Toya said, shaking his head in disbelief as they crossed the last few yards of distance towards the cradle. He stormed ahead, passing through raw darkness to get to the illuminated section of ground, then stuck his head over the small, rocking cradle, within which were two tiny cubs, a little crow hatchling, and, older than the other three, a distinctly colored skunk, who blinked awake at Toya’s approach. “I can see right through your illusions, faerie. Your mind tricks don’t work on us,” the wolf continued confidently, the rest of the crew catching up to him a few moments later.

Ever so slowly, almost deliberately, the little skunk, who, at maybe four years old, was just tall enough to reach the bars of his cradle, sat cross legged in a thick, childishly printed diaper and nothing else. “I’ve been waiting for you to come here…” The phantom child version of Farix said, in a voice very much like his own. It looked up at the four dumbstruck adventurers, slowly going between each of the other three cubs and unwrapping them from the swaddling cocoons each was encased in. “And, now that you are… Take a good, careful look…” Each of the other three mimic children was dressed in a similar fashion, a shirt of some kind that ran down to the crotch, then buttoned up over a thick, heavily padded backside. Toya could smell the fresh piddle coming from the Mimic-Toya’s crinkling backside. Then, sitting back down, Mimic Farix turned and smiled at the awestruck onlookers, “Because this is how you’re all going to look in a few days… How’s that belt feeling, Toya? It’s already begun for you… Welcome to the game… I hope you all have fun.”