Saga of the Soul Dungeon

"Travel means a great many things, and it is rarely the method of transportation or the course of the journey that define what it means. No, instead, it is why that matters.

You might say, surely, that it could be defined by what, or who, one is traveling with, as well, and I will acknowledge that there is some truth to that.

However, I shall illustrate my point via example. Imagine, for a moment, a person, traveling with their family, their possessions laden upon their conveyance, their personal household goods, furniture, and the instruments of their profession all packed away.

Why is this person traveling?

Well, your first instinct might be to say that they are relocating to open up shop elsewhere. Why else would they have packed such a totality of their worldly possessions?

And I ask, why else indeed?

Perhaps they are fleeing from a dungeon break, or their previous place of employment has burned down and they have been forced to go seek out family in another city, or perhaps they are part of the entourage of a noble house, now following their liege as they relocate for reasons of their own.

So, you see, why one travels makes all the difference. The same course may be travelled by merchants, bandits, adventurers, kings, laborers, and even then, the reasons they travel are truly what matter. A bandit can travel a path to return home to mourn the passing of their parent, and even a laborer might travel purely for their own enjoyment."

-From Ojara Hatara's Epistolary on Travel

==Zidaun==

Even traveling via slogi, whose six feet, firm steps, and incredibly soft fur made the journey easier, the depths of Freeze made it an arduous process. The heat stones carefully interwoven into the interior of our fur garments constantly produced heat, keeping our bodies thawed. However, while we wore hoods and wrapped fur around our lower faces as much as possible, our eyes and some skin were naturally uncovered.

Unfortunately, that meant our eyes and sections of skin burned from the intensity of the cold, even with the levels in Cold Resistance we had each accumulated over the years.

There were, of course, ways to reduce the exposure levels further, as well as the intense glare of the twin celestial lights in the sky. However, goggles, or thinly banded glasses, also involved reducing our field of view. While the risk here, in the wilderness, was substantially reduced from doing the same thing in the dungeon, the presence of wild monsters, and even just dangerous animals, meant that taking that type of risk was unwise.

Besides, Firi, with his class: Merciful Hand of Shurum, was more than capable of healing the light-burns that reddened the whites of our eyes each day, and the small bits of frostbite that accumulated. Shurum, god of light, order, and cold that he was, was apparently equally skilled in healing the damage caused by such, as he was at inflicting them with his presence reflecting off the snow and his withheld warmth.

So it was that I was having my eyes healed, again, the four of us on the ground, the slogi standing around us in a rough square as a bulwark against the razor of the frozen winds. A cold silvery blue light washed over me in a surge of icy needles, soothing the burning itch of my light-burned eyes.

Firi took his hand off my forehead, but I caught it before it could withdraw too far, holding it in my own gloved fingers.

"Thanks, Firi," I said, smiling gently, not that he could see it behind my furs.

"Of course, anytime," he replied, and I could hear a matching smile in his own voice, as we held each other for a moment.

"That's great and all, but could you do my eyes now, Shurum's icy balls, it's miserable out here," Gurek said, causing us to both jolt, and making Firi turn toward him.

Inda's hand abruptly smacked into the back of Gurek's head.

"Timing, idiot," she hissed at him.

"What? Aren't you cold too?" he asked.

"Not the point," she said, glaring. "Besides, of all of us, you are the one who could wait the longest. I know you've been delaying the damage with your skills. Have you even started to feel any pain yet? Waiting another minute wouldn't have killed you. "

"Sure, but the tension might have," he muttered under his breath.

With my aura perception, I was probably the only one who overheard.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Inda said, her voice saccharine.

"Uh, nothing, just-" he said, casting his gaze around frantically, before they settled on Firi. "Uh, just waiting to be healed, though you really ought to take care of Inda first. Go on, get to it."

Firi rolled his eyes, but put his right hand out anyway, and Inda obligingly stepped forward to meet it.

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A moment later and she shuddered, the frozen light washing through her. Another moment later, Gurek did the same.

"Gah, not sure it's worth it, damned extra cold," Gurek muttered, though not softly enough this time.

Firi just shook his head, laughing softly, but Inda smacked Gurek again. "Show some gratitude," she said, before turning to Firi. "Thank you again."

Firi just waved a hand absently, "Don't worry about it."

I looked around, though most of my vision was blocked by the slogi. They were calm, so we were not likely to be in any great danger, their senses superior to our own in this environment. Plus, few things would want to take on four pack hunters like them, even if they wanted to get to us.

Fortunately, the path to the dungeon, weaving like a song across the landscape, looked to be avoiding the most dangerous places. Except for the destination, of course.

It warmed my heart, if not my flesh, to feel the call of the dungeon, the echo of the divine like a hymn of exaltation.

We mounted back onto the slogi, continuing the journey.

An hour later, and Shurum and Otga were starting to get low in the sky, the light not yet shading toward fire and blood, but that wasn't far off.

To our south, a mile or so distant, one of the dangerous places we were avoiding spread across the horizon.

The Nictic Bone Wood, the trees especially skeletal in freeze. The matte leaves, a purple so dark it was black in the distance, were directly attached to the trunk and few branches and held flat against the surface, completely concealing the pale bone yellow bark beneath. The trees themselves were harmless, though the leaves were poisonous this time of year, the pigment they used concentrated to lethal levels for those foolish enough to try eating them. They would fade to a pale lavender when Thaw came, the leaves no longer needing to be so dark to absorb any extra light and heat, and they would rise from the surface, until they were perpendicular, the crescent shaped leaves anchored to the tree along the inside of the curve.

From a distance, from Thaw until Freeze came again once more, the wood would look fuzzy with lavender, though coming closer would resolve the trees into off white and lavender striped figures reaching for the sky.

However, again, the trees were not the danger now. No, that was what ate some of the leaves this time of year, and gashed lines across the wood to sharpen and poison their claws, leaving wounds in the bark that oozed purple-black sap which glued the wounds and surrounding leaves back together.

The Duskmask Howlers.

An apex predator, they stalked the wood at night, their shades of deep purple and lavender fading into the darkness, their claws stained even blacker with fresh applications of poisonous sap.

They dug through the layered snow and ground, seeking hidden or hibernating animals and monsters, happy to eat anything they could sink their claws into. For most things, they didn't need the poison, but giant Variegated Thorn Whorpes burrowed beneath the surface in carefully hidden burrows, sleeping their way until Thaw. The many legged whorpes were more than a match for the howlers in a straight contest, but if a howler could poison one, it would let it die, and its flesh freeze, slowly consuming the carcass over the many long months. Just a single one might be enough to last until Thaw, if they were lucky.

Unfortunately, while they would calm down in Thaw, with much more competition, and therefore much more risk, now with Freeze nearing its end, they were likely to be exceptionally aggressive if they didn't already have sufficient food hoarded away.

Which is why we were not going to get any closer than we already were.

It was still, potentially, dangerous, though Firi would be able to eventually heal any of us who were poisoned, though it would take time and effort, as night meant they would start roaming.

For that reason, we were headed for somewhere even more dangerous, though as long as we didn't get too close, we should be perfectly safe.

A ruin.

Night was coming, dark and low across the sky, and stars were starting to fill the void. Yamash wasn't fully visible yet, though their edges were creeping into view.

Washing out the darkness of night was the ghostly glow of the ruin, directly interposed between us and the wood.

If the ruins are hostile to us, they are even less friendly to other creatures.

I didn't know the name of this particular ruin, as there were many, dotted in a line stretching east and west, though together they were called the Baleful Remnants.

Why a line? We didn't know.

Various scholars proposed answers, and expeditions occasionally attempted to venture into the ruins to find out more, but those almost always ended in disaster, or at the least, a hurried retreat under failing protective spells and skills. Occasionally, some suicidally brave, reckless, or overconfident individuals would venture into the ruins, usually resulting in the expected death. However, a rare individual would return successfully, making a fortune off information hungry scholars, and also selling their information to the adventurers guild.

And people think dungeon delving is dangerous.

People who were properly trained, talented, and prepared had decent odds in a dungeon, though the first few delves were almost always the most dangerous.

Admittedly, if a person, and their party, is not trained, talented, and prepared…

On the other hand, these ruins could chew up even the powerful and prepared like they were nothing.

Hence why we were giving them a healthy distance.

In truth, we would probably be safe to get closer, and that would leave us safer from anything else that might want to attack us, but the consequences of being wrong were sufficiently terrible that it wasn't worth it.

There were, of course, plenty of ruins across the world that were safe, explored, and downright boring, being of value only to scholars and whomever they paid to escort them.

Those ruins generally didn't shudder with baleful light through the night. Apparitions of half formed people flickered to life, sometimes making garbled hissing noises before fading away. Burning red lights scattered like sparks, though they tracked in groups across the ground like pack hunters. Buildings, mostly muffled and obscured beneath the snow groaned and clicked, and lights in a multitude of colors flashed across the facades, sometimes fully visible, and other times causing sections of snow to glow dully.

"Gods, I hate ruins," Gurek said, pausing in setting up camp to glare again at the ghostly ruins.

Firi and I just nodded, neither of us particularly fond of them either.

"These ones are nasty, to be sure," Inda said. "Though you know they aren't all like that. I've been to a few cities with ruins, just outside the city. They were old and dead, nothing active about them. One was particularly beautiful, and couples would stroll between the ruined buildings in the warm months, the overgrown plants almost idyllic over the gleam of the pale blue metal beneath. The local adventurer's guild kept the area clear of monsters."

"Surprised they left the metal," Gurek said.

Inda snorted.

"If they could figure out a way to work it, they probably wouldn't have. Just breaking off a piece is almost impossible, and they couldn't find any smiths whose skills could do anything with it. Not worth the effort to harvest something they cannot even use."

A flare of light, and a cracking discharge of sound marked a large bird being shot out of the sky, causing each of us to jump.

"Ugh, I cannot believe we are going to try to sleep here," Gurek said.

"Safer than being farther away from them, with the forest so close," I said, shaking my head.

Gurek muttered some more, but he didn't bother to argue. If he'd had a better solution, he would have said so earlier. Certainly he was rarely shy about speaking his mind.

The slogi, even with the ruins nearby, were fast asleep, burrowed slightly into the snow and cuddled together into a pile, looking like nothing more than a faintly moving snow drift.

We slept in shifts, but when morning came we were safe, and we packed up, continuing our journey.