The Dungeon's Worst Little Mistake

"I've never seen the sky so empty here before."

"Milady?"

Catherine Raingarden ignores her maid and bodyguard as she continues to look up at the sky, not a word more except for a small sigh escaping her lips. The blue sky that used to be filled with the bustling traffic of air ships coming and going is now empty save for a few stragglers and the occasional cloud.

Not but a couple of weeks ago it would have been impossible to look up without seeing at least one ship carrying a haul full of processed and frozen fish away from the city, or to find passenger vessels ferrying in rich tourists looking to enjoy the beaches. Silest is, or was, a rich city of trade and commerce. Being positioned in the center of the west coast, almost all trade by the sea had ended up going through Silest. Goods would come in from ships on the water and almost immediately after they would be loaded and shipped off through the sky or in carriages on the ground.

Silest was rich.

And now it isn't.

The sky is empty. The docks are quiet with fishing vessels loitering away with no work to do. The streets are low on foot traffic with trash starting to pile up on the cobblestone. The sound of merchants hawking theirs wares is now but a distant whisper. The city is quiet, greying, dying.

And all it had taken to kill this once great city, this monolith of trade, was for the Kobolds to leave.

It had only taken a couple of days for the effects to be felt. First the banks had collapsed; most of their assets having been tied up in investments with the Silver Scale. With the Kobolds packing up and suddenly leaving, the banks had no choice but to demand that all loans be paid back in full from the local businesses, and the people, those with enough money to actually be able to use a bank, had quickly rushed to demand that all their money be withdrawn.

Any merchant with enough sense and money were quick to pack up and leave the city as soon as they could. For a couple of days, the gates to the city had been clogged with carriages leaving, each and every one of them bulging with unsold merchandise and pulled by horses neighing and complaining about the weight.

With the Kobolds gone, the banks collapsing, and most of the richer merchants leaving, it wasn't long until the nobles quickly decided that now might be a good time to head to their summer homes for an extended vacation or to go and check on other investment, bringing their families with them of course. They'll be back, they promise. They aren't fleeing or running away. They just have other… more important thing to be doing right now. Please ignore that their mansions are now empty of all valuables and all the servants have been laid off.

Catherine knows better of course. She's received the letters from her own family by now, telling her to return home and leave Silest behind to die. Though it is, of course, written in flowery words that don't clearly say that, but yet heavily imply. After all, we can't have anyone else who reads the letter, for whatever reason, to think that the Raingardens don't care about the common people. That would just be absurd.

Regardless, Catherine has to give some respect to the Kobolds. They alone have managed to get the greatest number of people to evacuate the city, and all it took was for them to leave first. Even if it was just the rich and nobility so far.

Now if only we could get the rest of them to evacuate…

Again, Catherine can only sigh as she looks down upon the city from the balcony of her rented hotel room.

Those who are left in the city, even after the rich and powerful have fled, even after the call to officially evacuate had been issued, and even after the mission to slay the Necromancer had been declared a failure, are the people. The commoners, the poor, the workers, the serfs and the peasants and however else you might want to call them. Old and young, man and woman, every single person who doesn't have the means of leaving the city and potentially starting a new life elsewhere. Those who don't think they could make it outside of the cities protective walls and know that they would simply die to the bandits and monsters living outside. Those who's entire lives were wrapped around and tied to the very bricks of Silest.

Nearly eighty percent of the population of Silest is still here. And most of them are still unwilling to leave. They just can't bring themselves to do it yet.

Many are now jobless, left to sit around a wallow in their little homes as they wait for the inevitable and their children try to have fun playing in streets filling with piles of trash. Many of them still clearly hope that something will magically fix this situation. That maybe the Church will send a Hero to save them all, and that if they just wait long enough, Silest will bounce back and return to its old self.

Faith in the Goddess. It's all they have left.

Left with nothing else to do, Catherine finishes her lukewarm tea and heads for the Adventurers Guild, her maid following close behind as the two navigate past mounds of refuse pushed off to the side like shoveled snow. With the Dungeon being completely unusable, the city is suddenly without a place to dispose of their trash. The idea of dumping it outside the walls had been put forward, but promptly shot down, as a pile of rotting food and other waste would just attract creatures from the woods and to the city. Last thing they need right now is fel-racoons trying to sneak inside.

The smell of shit and rot is pungent in the streets, wafting into the air like a manifestation of the shared depression and resignation of the people. With a cloth held to her face, Catherine tries to ignore all the eyes watching her from dark windows and shadow filled alley ways. Just doing her best to quickly get back to her new job at the guild as a medic.

Ahead of her, her view is dominated by a newly constructed wall that had been quickly erected by contracted Earth Mages, cutting off the entirety of the middle of the city and everything surrounding the Dungeon. Past the walls and clearly able to be seen by everyone, is a billowing tower of black smoke that has become a familiar sight over the past few weeks.

The guards recognizing her, they wave her through the gate and let her in with a small bow and a short greeting in passing. Past the walls, the smell of smoke and burnt meat is almost overwhelming and threatens to clog her sinuses. For a short moment, Catherine even finds herself debating over whether she prefers the smell of rotting trash, but she knows that she will have to return to that regardless, so the point is moot anyways. She's tempted to sigh again, but the thought of taking in a deep breath with all this bad air keeps her from doing so.

Let's just get to work…

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Quickening her pace, she makes for the guild and tries to ignore the sounds of screaming and clicking zombies as they are burnt alive (unalive?) and reduced to ash, the twisted and fungous infested things endlessly crawling up from the Dungeon's depths like so much vomit from its mouth.

"Welcome back Miss Raingarden, Miss Zenith. Are you here for another shift?" A tired, but very pretty looking receptionist welcome them as they enter the guild.

"Hello, May. Yes, I'm sure there is plenty of work to do?"

The overworked girl can only give a tired smile. "Yes. You and the other medics are probably going to be in for a long day. Again, thank you for all your help so far…"

"What is it?" Catherine asks as the receptionist trails off.

"Ah, well… I was wondering if you were planning on leaving the city as well. All the other Nobles have left already, after all…"

Catherine just gives her a little smile. "No, not yet. What, already wishing me to leave?"

"Wha- No, no! Not at all! It's just…"

"What is it?"

The receptionist looks up nervously, chewing on her lips as she debates speaking. When she does eventually, timidly answer, she says, "It's my little sister, Daisy. When you do leave, an-and I know this is a lot to ask… Could you take her with you?"

Zenith steps forward. "You ask too much of my Mistress."

"I'm sorry, it's just that she is the only family I have left! I know the Guild Master said he would do what he could for us employees, but I don't know if we will be able to make it in a new city. What if there aren't enough jobs for all of us? I-if I have to work in the red light district, I don't want her to get dragged into that kind of life. I-"

"Do not burden the young miss with your troubles, May!" Zenith snaps as the receptionist tries to take a desperate step forward.

"Zenith, that's enough." Catherine says with a tired voice.

"Milady." Zenith gives a little bow and steps back.

"May, my family is sending an airship to come and pick me up. When it arrives, even if the crew complains, I intend to fill it with as many people as possible. Make sure that you and your sister are there and I will bring you with me. That goes for all of you." Catherine says to all the eavesdropping receptionists in the room. "I am sure that my family can find work for capable women who can read and write. Just pack lightly, please. There will only be so much space after all."

"Thank you, Miss! Thank you!" May cries.

Catherine just awkwardly smiles and takes a step back as she is suddenly swarmed by crying girls, the whole lot of them trying to thank here and shake her hands. Thankfully, her maid pulls her out there and gets them to leave her alone, stating that Catherine still has work to do and that they are keeping her.

Catherine gives Zenith a little thank you for getting her out and the two head into the medical ward of the guild. An area typically meant to only handle a handful of adventurers who return injured, but is now being treated as nearly a full blown hospital.

Stepping through the doors, Catherine is treated to the sounds of people coughing up their own lungs and groaning in pain as they hold their stomachs. A sickness has come to Silest at the worse possible time, and every healer in the city is working to keep it from becoming a full pandemic.

Catherine has a long day ahead of her…

Nearly eight hours into what is looking like is going to be a shift that will be stretching well into the night, a bleary-eyed Catherine that is being fueled entirely by caffeine and spite lets out an exhausted breath as she finishes healing yet another patient. The man had been carted in, coughing so much that he could barely breathe. Now he is breathing easy again, life slowly flowing back into his sweat-soaked pale skin.

Leaving the man to be carted away by the staff, Catherine moves to the next table, her mana already practically running on empty.

"Just a couple more, then I'll take a break."

Making her way over to the next table with a poor old woman fretting over her sick child, Catherine reaches for a bowl of clear water, preparing herself to dredge up what little mana she can from her core to pull out just one more healing spell.

The mana leaves her body like sore muscle being forced to move against its will. By the time the child is healed and the crying mother is being pulled away with her sleeping child in her arm, Catherine is feeling about ready to pass out for the rest of the night. She returns the now dirty water to the bowl and lets out an exhausted sigh, her tired eyes watching the water as it sloshes around.

But even after it calms and settles into the bowl, the water doesn't still. She watches it curiously, little waves rippling across its surface.

"What in the world?"

On the other side of the room, Catherine's maid, Zenith, looks up from reading her book, her nerves suddenly spiking as she senses danger. Darting out of her chair and moving for Catherine's side, she makes it there just as the world suddenly begins to shake.

Someone screams, shelves fall over and glass breaks, Zenith quickly pulls Catherine to the floor and holds her head, protecting her with her body in case the ceiling suddenly collapses. The shaking doesn't stop for a long time; four times it feels like the world is being cracked in half. At one point it even feels like the entire building suddenly lurches to the side.

By the time everything stops, Catherine is shivering and holding onto Zenith for dear life. She goes to ask if it is all over, but before she can, Zenith is already pulling her off the floor and pulling her into a run.

"What, why are we-"

Behind them, a window breaks as a body comes crashing through, the sounds of combat coming through as Catherine gets pulled out of the medical ward and through the front of the building. The receptionists are all cowering behind their desks, but Zenith doesn't stop as she pulls Catherine from the building at a dead sprint.

Outside is a scene of chaos. A nearby building is on fire and half demolished, looking like it took a stray fireball. Soldiers are stabbing at rotting creatures with their spears, a mage is on the floor, crawling away and calling for help as he tries to kick a zombie away from grabbing him. Elsewhere, a pack of the things are tearing into a corpse that is still twitching.

Great fissures run through though the cobblestone everywhere, the entrance to the Dungeon itself being nearly entirely split in half with one of its two grand stone doors having fallen off its hinges. The zombies are spilling out of the entrance now that they aren't being held back, the mushroom infested things crawling out of the ground like demons from hell.

Zenith doesn't stop moving for a second, forcing Catherine to keep running as they dodge and weave through crowds of fleeing people. Ahead of them, a man gets tackled to the floor and goes down in a tangle of limbs, gurgling as his throat gets ripped out.

Panting and gasping for air, still shellshocked and stunned, Catherine runs with everything she has as she gets dragged through the middle of the city by Zenith.

It feels like hours of running, but it is probably more like a couple of minutes. It's all a blur, but before she knows it, they are at the newly erected gates, joining the throngs of fleeing people as they pour through the gates.

On the other side, holding her knees, gasping for air and dripping with sweat, mana exhaustion and regular exhaustion leaving her ears rings and her heart pounding in her chest, Catherine looks around and sees scared and injured people everywhere, many of them calling for help or looking for missing family.

At the gates, the soldiers call to close the gates. Catherine can hear as people on the other side scream for them to stop. To please let them through. They cry for help, but their cries are cut short as the gates slam shut and are locks, their calls for aid soon becoming final screams of pain and fear as they all killed and eaten by the Undead.

"To the walls! Don't let any of them climb out, we need to keep this contained! Move, move, move!!! Earth Mages, get these cracks fixed and those doors sealed shut, now! Somebody, get these civilians out of here!"

Catherine tries to stumble towards the walls, "We need to help." But she gets pulled back by Zenith, her bodyguard, and quickly dragged away.

"No milady, we need to get you to safety. You are in no condition to help right now.

"Zenith, is the city about to collapse? Did the Necromancer finally do it?" She ask worriedly as she looks around at the chaos filling the streets.

Zenith looks around as well as she continue pulling her master behind her, "No, I don't think so. The earthquake has stopped and doesn't seem likely to continue. Something must have happened deep underground, but the Dungeon still stands."

"Where are we going?"

"Your room. We are packing up, now. As soon as your family's airship arrives, we are leaving. We need to get you out of here before it is too late."

End of Book II