The Dungeon's Worst Little Mistake

The city of Silest is now, under decree of the king of Sil and backed by the Church of the Goddess, under quarantine. Sitting in the hills outside the city is now the camps of second and third legions, ordered to kill anyone and anything that attempts to flee the city on foot. Out in the bay, the kingdom's navy has set up a blockade and has already burned and sunk several vessels that have attempted to flee from the ports. And even in the skies, airships patrol to ensure that no one can attempt to fly in or out of the infested city.

It has been nearly a week now since the ground had erupted and the Undead were free to now leave the Dungeon, and Catherine Raingarden can still remember watching as the airship her family had sent for her had been turned away with the treat of being shot down. Watching as her family's colors had flown away and disappeared into the distance. Not even the influence of a great noble family can get through.

There is no leaving now. The kingdom's response to a potential outbreak had been swift and immediate. Everyone who remained within the city is now trapped. Everyone will die with the city…

Almost as if to match the bleakness of the city denizen's despair, the sky above the city has become black and grey, the clouds heavy with a sickly rain that never seems to pass and burns the skin as it falls. Death is leaking out from the Dungeon like an open, rotting wound full of puss. Infecting and corrupting everything that is exposed to its slow death. The city's freshwater supply has turned to poison. The earth has become barren and withered, and the air contains the ever-present scent of death on the wind.

But there is color to be found in this now grey and bleak world. A rainbow of colors in fact, sparkling and shimmering as they float through the air and fill the sky above the Dungeon in the center of the city.

Spores. Oh so beautiful in how the float about on the wind and shimmer in so many colors of their self-made light. But that beauty carries with it a promise of death. A death that is slow and crawling. One that will leave its victim still conscious and feeling as their body is gradually consumed and converted into a walking, breathing mushroom bed whose only purpose is to spread more spores.

If it were not for the quick work of the Silest's survivors coming together, and the city's mages working to keep it contained, the entire city would already have been covered in the spores. But for now, they are trapped within the closed off center of the city. The spores float around like flakes in a snow globe as a grand ritual air spell keeps them contained from spreading through the sky. The central walls below, hastily repaired and sealed with earth magics, keeps anything from spreading into the rest of the city on the ground.

At least for now.

Peering down from atop the wall, mace clenched tightly in her hands, Catherine can't help but to pale as she sees the state of the city's center now. It is an entirely different world.

Fungous and mold grows on every surface like living flesh and spores cover the ground like freshly fallen snow. Every tree that used to line the streets has been rotted away and replaced with tall standing mushrooms with fluffy growths for foliage. Shops and homes have become like living hills, with their still open entrances being like caves into hell. The bell tower and any tall spires have become monuments to death and rot, with their fleshy bodies raising high into the sky with curtains of transparent mycelian growths flowing in the wind like flags baring a nation's colors.

All of it is barely contained within these walls. A desperately contained world, or hell, just waiting to be released upon the world around it.

But what truly causes Catherine to pale is the not the beautiful deadly world beneath her feet, but instead it is the denizens that call it home.

Twisted and malformed, they are more than just the Gremlins and Goblins that had inhabited the first layer of the Dungeon. The insects and animals of the second layer, the underground forest, can even be spotted crawling around or flying through the spore filled air on rotting wings. And of course, among them is the thousands of people who had not managed to flee in time before the center was sealed off.

These walking corpses shamble around with their mouths wide open, dead eyes staring back up at those watching from atop the walls. Their bodies covered in blood and filth, and with mushrooms growing and spores spilling out from every orifice. And as she watches the Undead move about and mindlessly bump into everything, she witness as a much larger creature hungrily gobbles up what looks like the zombie of an old granny.

It's mutated body increases in size, and horrifyingly, the grandma zombie's face grows out of its back to join a multitude of others. All of the faces have their mouths wide open like they are screaming in pain, spores billowing out like smoke from a furnace.

This isn't the first time she had seen one of these twisted Undead moving through the streets. Ones that consume and subsume other Undead to grow in size and power. They are becoming more numerous as the days continue to pass. And bigger…

The largest of them all can be seen from any position on the wall. It is simply that big already. At nearly half the size of the walls, the disgusting mess of conjoined flesh stomps through the streets on five malformed legs and balances itself by holding up its massive weight against the nearest buildings with searching tentacles and two thin arms on one side, with a massive claw like arm on the other.

It is slow. Taking its time as it stomps through the city and snatches up smaller Undead with tentacles to pull up into its body and feed. At all times, its malformed and goatlike head remains firmly looking upwards, not towards those on the walls who it can almost reach, but up further still, as if it is searching for something hiding up in those big grey-black clouds in the sky.

"It is simply a matter of time until that thing grows to become a Kaiju." Catherine hears a gruff voice speak from behind her.

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Catherine turns and finds Guild Master Alexander making his way over from the stairs, dressed in a full suit of armor made of thick steel and tough monster hides; an old set of gear that hasn't been worn since the man had retired from active service some years ago and settled down to work as the local Guild Master. From under his helmet of what Catherine can see of his face, his exhaustion is easily made apparent from the dark circles under his eyes. And despite how he walks with his back ramrod straight and power filling his stride, he looks as if he has seemingly aged a few years over the last few days, with more grey hair beginning to fill his dark beard and wrinkles marking his face. He is exhausted. Everyone is exhausted and Catherine is hardly an exception.

With Death infused mana flooding out from the Dungeon and filling the air, the mere act of breathing is already enough to start noticeably shaving off hours and days of life from even the healthiest of people. For the weak and infirmed, it is a death sentence. In this past week alone, Catherine has already seen more people die than she ever thought she would witness in her lifetime. Those who are sick or heavily wounded become unable to be healed, their afflictions simply worsening and injuries becoming infected and worse and worse until they eventually give out and die. The elderly become weaker and weaker until they just go to sleep one day and never wake up again. At least their deaths are largely peaceful so long as they were healthy. But it is the infants that will most likely scar Catherine's mind forever.

Seeing newborn babes held lifelessly in their mothers' arms as they cry. Faces turned purple and eyes swollen as their lungs had given out and throat sealed shut, choking on their final cries as no one could save them. Or skin pale as a paper and spotted black with disease, their little bodies being completely unable to fight off the sickness in the air as it all freely enters them with every breath and leaves again with little wet coughs.

Catherine can still feel it in her hands. The weight. Still remember watching it happen. The moment when the first baby held in her hands had died while she had desperately fought to keep it alive with all her magic and every prayer she could send to the Goddess. The moment the last breath had left its tiny little body and its arms went limp…

Catherine quickly shakes herself to scare away the thought, her mind having become more and more, frighteningly accustomed to death over the course of a single week. Where was she? Alexander, right, yes… If he's here, then that means it is time.

"Guild Master, sir. Is everything ready?" Catherine asks as she looks back to the dead city and watches an Undead bird smash itself against the barrier in a failed attempt to reach her, its broken body plummeting back down to disappear somewhere behind a building. She doesn't even flinch.

"Yes, Catherine, everything is ready. Are you sure that you wish to participate, though? We still need you at the church-" He tries to bring up an argument from the day before but Catherine interrupts.

"I have to be the one that goes. I'm the only Water Mage left in the city really capable of fighting. The others would just be dead weight down there. They are better off staying at the church and keeping our drinking water clean, helping the medics and priests save at least one more life."

"Catherine, I know you blame yourself, but you don't have t-" He tries again, taking a step towards her. But he is quickly silenced with a dull glare from the younger woman.

Of course she blames herself. If I had just killed that damn Gremlin, even if it cost my life, all of this could have been avoided.

"I have too. I'm not going to stay cooped up in the church as people keep dying and their corpses continue to fill the streets. I have to something, anything…"

Playing medic isn't doing enough. Even as she tries her hardest to help people, they just keep dying. Far too many times has someone died on her table and she had to order for them to be removed to make room for the next patient. To just watch as their body gets carried out of the room to be tossed onto the fires burning outside. To watch as another sick person desperately limps in to clamber onto the still warm table and plead to be healed.

One too many. Her hands don't even shakes anymore. The sight of a fresh corpse doesn't even scare her anymore. The scent of death and rot doesn't even make her want to vomit anymore. It's just normal.

Catherine can feel herself becoming colder and colder, like everything she is seeing is nothing but a dream, and it is only getting worse as every day passes. If she doesn't do something, and do it soon, she is certain that she won't be able to keep going. At some point, she will simply become a walking corpse herself, much like these infected things before her. Her grip on her mace tightens until the leather is making nose and her skin is turning white under her gloves.

For the briefest moment, the thought of stepping over the edge takes her. Just a step, that all she would need and then she could finally-

A hand finds her shoulder and a voice pulls her thoughts back away from the ledge. Zenith, her maid and bodyguard who had been silently standing behind her this whole time like a shadow.

"Do not worry Guild Master. I swear on my life and as a servant of the Raingardens that I will keep her safe. We will accomplish this mission and come back safely."

Long gone is the frilly maid's outfit that she used to wear and long gone is the disguise of simply being a maid. In her place is an experienced adventurer, a killer, and a survivor. Dressed all in pitch-black leather armor from neck to boots, the only color that can be found is from her exposed face where her scar seems to now draw even more attention than it used to. Her body is covered with enough knives to arm a small militia, and several dozen alone are wrapped around her thighs, the small blades practically becoming like a second layer of armor from how they overlap each other. Finally, along her belt is a number of pouches full of tools, and on her back is a pair of blades that Catherine had never seen the woman carry around before when she playing at being a maid.

Alexander gives a tired smile and nods. "That's a reassurance at least. With you she should be safe, Zenith the Assassin."

Zenith smiles and blushes a little, looking embarrassed. "Please don't call me that. I'm just a maid now, and quite happy being so. You have no idea how hard it was to find legitimate work while having that title on my back. I've never even done any assassinations in my life…" She says with a sigh.

Alaxander lets out a small laugh, "That's on you for dressing like one for so long."

"I was young and thought it made me look cool. It's not my fault it worked so well…" She grumbles under her breath.

Alaxander lets out another sigh and a laugh and then switches his tired gaze back to Catherine.

"Very well, it's too late now and I can't stop you anyways. The mission is ready to begin and everyone is gathering. If you are ready, come with me."

Catherin silent nods and gives one last look towards the center of the infested city before moving to follow him down the stairs with Zenith following behind like a shadow. Catherine might not have been able to prevent this from happening. And she might not be able to stop it from happening. But at the very least, she can try and postpone the inevitable.

If she can just give the city a few more days, maybe a couple more weeks, then perhaps someone else who can actually do something will come and save them all.

This all she has left. All she can do is fight for a little bit more time or die trying. At least this way, she doesn't have to keep standing over that table and watching her failures continue to pile up. With this, if she fails, that will be the end of it.