Feeling half-disappointed and half relieved, Hilda returned to the entrance to the chapel, where the sound of fighting gargoyles died down and was replaced by frankly quite talented drumming and folk singing. Hilda snickered. If she ever became rich enough to afford a castle, she’d definitely get a pair of gargoyles.

There was still no sign of Philly or Medvak, so Hilda decided to leave them a note and scout ahead. She’d explore as far as the pantry, she decided, get something sweet to eat and then return to the chapel entrance.

After walking for a few dozen meters, she noticed a door to her right. It didn’t have a handle or any other visible means of opening it. Hilda had already used up most of her daily spells and special abilities, so wasting another one just to explode a door seemed like poor strategy. She’d have to play the rogue for a bit. Not a promising prospect for a stubby little dwarf with 8 points of Dexterity… But what else could she do? Not be an idiot?

Making sure to stay 11 feet away from the door, she sniffed at it. It smelled of humanoid piss and overcooked meat. Something that made you piss yourself with fear and then cooked and ate you? A promising start. Really, it would be best to wait for her companions before kicking in the door. On the other hand, one win could be all that was needed to win this dungeon. One win.

Okay, Hilda, you’ve got it. You just survived a fourth level chamber. You are at almost full hp. You have a few cool sounding special abilities left. It should be a piece of cake. Hopefully not one that she will choke on…

Shame she didn’t know what most of these abilities did. Castigate. Hilda had no idea what it meant, but she liked the sound of it. It sounded powerful… Ah, screw it, let’s castigate the hell out of this encounter. Hilda, you’ve got this!

Hilda charged at the door, shield first. The door, which wasn’t locked, snapped open and revealed a rather unpleasant scene. Instead of a room, she found herself in a small natural cavern. A pair of trolls that looked like marshmallows that fell into the fire lay on the floor. Their cots and bone collections were blackened. In the center of the cave there was an altar with a few charred skulls and steel chest whose pristine condition seemed to mock the carnage around it. At the back of the cave, there was a dark passage with a steep incline -- probably an entrance to the underworld, home to dark elves, dark dwarves and the huge worms that ate them. A narrow stream trickled down the wall and pooled into a fetid puddle that was home to a single white crab.

Trying to find traps by poking everything with her sword (she really needed to get an 11-feet-pole), Hilda advanced toward the chest, her heart pounding with anticipation. God bless stupid humans and their non-profit murdering.

Step by step, the armored dwarf bypassed the cooked trolls and their grisly bone collections, until she faced the altar. Steeling herself for, um, literally any bad thing that could happen, Hilda carefully slid the tip of her sword into the chest and flipped it open.

Empty.

To add insult to injury, it had some mustard stains at the bottom, as if whoever won this encounter, did it while eating a sandwich.

Hilda sighed and stomped back to the corridor, kicking at a leering skull on her way out. What the hell are you smiling at, you dead, um, something? She felt a tiny bit of relief at being spared a potentially deadly encounter with a pair of vicious trolls, but that tiny bit of relief was buried under a whole mountain of disappointment.

She was so close. One good treasure and she’d have her little domain. Well, it’d have to be one really good treasure, but still: was this really so much to ask? It’s not like she wanted to rule the Unidwarf Collective or overthrow the Temple of the Eclipse. She just wanted a little house. That’s all!

Well, at least she knew one thing. The guy who cleaned the room was a powerful magician of some sort. Even high level clerics weren’t able to annihilate things so thoroughly. Gods liked to give their victims a sporting chance. The uncaring universe had no such qualms.

If her theory was correct (and her theories sometimes were correct), then the spell caster must have gone further down, to where the real treasure waited. A wizard’s tower was incredibly expensive, so killing goblins and stealing their pouches wouldn’t advance an ambitious wizard in the slightest. Cleaning a third level room made him an asshole, but at least she’d probably never see him again.

Leaving the room, she turned right and started walking toward the third level. Soon, the immaculate environment of the fourth level was replaced by the strange hand art and the familiarly offensive smell of the third level. Hilda heard some commotion behind her, but it didn’t sound like Philly or Medvak, so she didn’t pay it any attention. Maybe the gargoyles got out and were brawling in the corridor? Maybe the dark elf was entertaining a guest? Maybe the spell caster was doing something big and boomy, like raining anvils on his enemies.

Not her problem in any case.

After ten minutes of walking, Hilda reached a wooden door that was slightly ajar. Adjacent to the door was the worst secret passage ever secreted. It was so poorly concealed that Hilda actually noticed it before she noticed the regular door. Whoever thought it was a good idea to just paint a section of wall on a door, letting some of the off-color paint spill to the floor, was a truly epic moron.

An epic moron who deserved to be beaten into a pulp with a hammer and have his treasure exporitated for the noble task of lettinga righteous a dwarf paladin build a home where she could fuck her boyfriend as loud as she wanted without her sisters offering her advice on the morning after.

A lizardman. Who’d be so stupid but a lizardman? In addition to a terrible sense of interior design, the scaly humanoid was also armed with a spiked club and a shield made from turtle shells. Neither helped him when someone froze him stiff and then made him explode all over the room. The colorful pieces of the malodorous monster were thawing amid art so crude Hilda couldn’t begin to guess what it was supposed to represent. Probably reptile dicks or something.

Of course, there was no treasure in the room. To the asshole go the spoils. The dwarf sighed and went to inspect the adjacent room with a heart steeled for disappointment.

The small room was dominated by a massive cage, similar to the one that nearly trapped her when she first arrived at the dungeon. The cage was made from fine steel, but not so fine as to resist having a good chunk of it disintegrated into fine powder. Hilda looked into the cage. There was half an onion ring on the floor.

“Your mother’s--” The dwarf hissed and kicked at the floor. It would have been satisfying to feel some pain in her toe to distract her from her increasingly foul mood, but sadly her sabaton was of superb dwarf quality and fully absorbed the force of the impact. The only thing Hilda accomplished was launch a cloud of dust into her face.

Fucking wizards.