Excited at the prospect of a reward, Rowan took up the rear, following Fiin as she descended. Halfway down the stairs, the walls disappeared, revealing a large room that glimmered brightly below them. Crystal torches provided light which reflected from deposits of shiny ores in the wall, all watched by a large group of thimps wielding pickaxes.

“Kriiiar, thann!” A large thimp at the back of the room noticed the party, pointing towards the stairs as he called for the other thimps to assist. The cry was quickly taken up by the rest, pickaxes clattering as they were thrown against the floor in favour of blades and claws.

“Get to the ground and get in formation!” Dillo urged them, his armour moving noisily as he charged down the stairs. The rest of the party followed him at a frantic, but slightly more subdued pace, none of them eager to fall the still considerable distance to the hard rock below.

The thimps were only ten paces away when Dillo arrived at the bottom, and had it not been for his enormous shield, it was likely that he would have been overwhelmed before the rest of the Frost Blades arrived to assist.

Fortunately, Dillo was able to repel the first four thimps, giving time for Jaro and Patri to leap the last ten feet and bring their axes down into the skull and shoulder of two unlucky thimps, splitting the creatures nearly in twain as they assisted their party leader.

Backs to the stairs, the three stood in a triangular formation, Dillo repelling the lead thimps as Jaro and Patri slew any who attempted to flank. Behind, Stenne stood ready to assist, hovering a few feet away to avoid being targeted by the thimps.

On the stairs, Rowan was forced to awkwardly slide past Fiin, her face grim as she launched spells into the horde of thimps below from her vantage point on the staircase. Doing his best to get by, Rowan’s well honed sense of balance was the only thing that prevented him falling twenty feet to the stones beneath, the weight of the sack doing its best to pull him into gravity’s embrace.

Fall, however, he did not, and it was with sword in hand that Rowan reached the bottom, just in time to defend Stenne from a thimp who had been sneaking up unnoticed from behind. While the others may have missed it, Rowan’s well trained eyes did not, and his sword stabbed into the thimp’s side, producing a cry of agony from the grey skinned being.

Damn it. Rowan had been aiming for the thimp’s heart, but his blade had not been steady, and the strike had only wounded the thimp, not slain it. Ignoring the sword in its side, the thimp swung at Rowan, its sharp claws passing within an inch of his face as he hastily bent backwards to avoid the strike.

Twisting the blade, Rowan elicited another scream from the thimp, blood bubbling at its mouth as its internal organs were sliced apart by the boy in front of it. Eyes glazing over, it attempted one last strike, but Tethis’ training had prepared Rowan for this, and he avoided the blow, the thimp slumping over dead as the last of its lifeforce was expended.

Breathing hard, Rowan withdrew his sword, moving back to take up a defensive posture beside Stenne. While he was not doing well in combat classes back at Faebrook, those were sparring matches against rich kids who had been training in such duels their entire lives. In a life or death situation, he could still hold his own, and he had proved that to himself.

A streak of confidence flared within Rowan, but just as quickly, he tamped it down. Overconfidence would get him killed. In front of him, Dillo, Jaro and Patri were showing what true martial mastery could do, hewing down thimps one after another with practiced ease as Fiin rained spells on their enemies from above.

“Thanks,” Stenne muttered to Rowan, the boy’s eyes were bloodshot, watching intently for any sign of injury among his comrades. Even the slightest hint that a thimp’s attack was going to pierce their defenses had him ready to move, rocking on his heels as he prepared to rush to their aid. “I didn’t see him coming at all.”

“Don’t mention it,” Rowan responded, his own eyes watching for any further sneak attacks. That was where his skills lay, and that was where he should focus for now. Leave the fighting to the combat specialists, and leave the counter ambushing to the stealth specialist; that was how it should be, and that was how they could keep everyone alive.

Two more thimps attempted to take out the Frost Blades’ healer, and two more thimps fell beneath Rowan’s blade, though not without reprisal. A large tear was torn in the side of his tunic, blood dripping from a deep cut beneath where the thimp’s claws had gotten him, and he would have been left limping had Stenne not healed the stab to his thigh that he received in order to behead the second would-be ambusher.

Injured or not, Rowan performed his job to the best of his ability, and it was not long before the fight began to wind down, the thimps’ numbers not enough to overwhelm the experienced Frost Blades.

With a thump, the head of the thimp foreman who had first noticed them fell to the floor, rolling bloodily over the stone for a short distance before coming to a stop. With that, the fight was over, the Frost Blades standing victorious amidst the carnage.

Wiping the blood off of his sword, Rowan set to work processing the bodies as Stenne healed the minor injuries that the three frontliners had accumulated. The first thing that caught Rowan’s eye was that the thimps on the second floor seemed much better equipped than those on the first. Weapons, makeshift armour, and better clothes all clearly set them apart from their dead relatives up above, and the coins and trinkets hidden on their bodies were also of higher quality and quantity than those carried by the thimps Rowan had searched previously.

There were also far more bodies, and it was with difficulty that Rowan completed the processing of thimp corpses, his sack now significantly heavier and bloodier as a result. Rejoining the others, he allowed Stenne to heal the minor wounds he had received, nodding gratefully to the taller boy who simply brushed it off.

“How’s your mana doing, Stenne?” Dillo asked as Rowan sat down at the edge of the group.

“Low,” Stenne said with a grimace. “We’ll have to wait here for a while unless you’re fine with me only healing the more severe injuries you guys get.”

“Not chancing that on the second floor,” Dillo responded immediately. “Luckily for us, there’s plenty of magical crystals around for us to mine while Stenne waits for his mana to recover, and plenty of pickaxes too.”

This announcement got a groan from the other members, while Rowan looked on in bemusement. Kanna had sent him into the dungeon for magical crystals, but she had neglected to show him an example of the crystals he was hunting, no doubt assuming that everyone knew what magical crystals looked like.

An incorrect assumption, but not one Rowan had decided to challenge. He was already on somewhat thin ice with Kanna due to his grades, or at least he assumed that to be the case. He did not want to make her start second guessing their arrangement due to his lack of what was apparently common knowledge.

Regardless of his reasons, Rowan surveyed the walls of the chamber with interest. Shiny, blue crystalline ores glittered in the torchlight, several sitting beside the walls where the thimps had left them in order to attack the interlopers. Now those crystals belonged to them, and it seemed that Dillo wanted them to extract the ones in the walls too.

“Won’t the noise of the pickaxes alert thimps further in to our presence?” Rowan asked carefully.

Dillo shook his head. “If the sounds of battle didn’t bring any more running over, then mining won’t either. The sounds of mining are what they’re supposed to be hearing anyways. So long as they don’t think to check whether it’s their comrades or the group of adventurers who’ve slaughtered them and taken their place, we’ll be fine.”

Jaro got a chuckle out of this, while Fiin and Stenne merely rolled her eyes at their leader’s attempted jest.

“The mana within dungeons does strange things to the perception of events within,” Fiin said, turning towards Rowan. “The effect varies from dungeon to dungeon, but the events of one chamber can generally not be sensed from the next. Mining should be safe, and we’ll have Stenne standing watch just in case.”

“Sitting watch,” Stenne interjected. “But yes, I’ll make sure we don’t get ambushed. Return the favour, so to speak.”

Unsure of how to respond to Stenne, Rowan simply smiled awkwardly and followed Dillo as he stood up, heading for the left wall of the chamber. The pickaxes carried by the thimps were smaller than Rowan would have liked, although they did not appear as comically tiny as they did in the hands of Jaro and Patri, both of which stood at least a head taller than Rowan himself.

Thankfully, excavating the crystals turned out to be fairly easy. The magical crystals were not embedded too deeply within the stone, and extracting them was not a challenge, even for the inexperienced Rowan. The only problem was…

“Woah!”

Slightly off target, Rowan’s pickaxe bit into the crystal. Rather than shattering, the crystal instead exploded outwards, crystalline shards showering him as blue fog spilled from the destroyed crystal.

“Oh yeah, watch for that,” Dillo called from the opposite end of the chamber. “They explode if you hit them too hard.”

“Right,” Rowan replied sullenly, the others stifling giggles as he cautiously lowered his hands to stare at the remnants of the crystal. Apart from the his wounded pride, the crystal hadn’t actually done too much to him. A few cuts on his exposed cheeks were bleeding lightly, and the backs of his hands were a bit bloody, but the rest of the shards had failed to pierce his armour, and his health had barely budged.

With a sigh, Rowan picked up his pickaxe and returned to mining. Although he wanted to be annoyed at Dillo for withholding the fact that magical crystals exploded when struck from him, he understood that it was just hazing, an act as common among street gangs as adventuring parties it seemed.

There were not many magical crystals in the wall, and it was only half an hour later that Rowan’s sack bulged with their fresh loot, four pounds of magical crystals the fruits of their and the dead thimps’ labours.

None of the following rooms contained any crystals, magic or otherwise, but the number of thimps present was still much higher than it had been in the chambers on the first floor. The number of thimp lives reaped by the Frost Blades soon reached the hundreds, and they showed no sign of slowing their onslaught, eager to reach the end of the second floor before their time was up.

Rowan’s sack continued to grow heavier as they progressed, the burlap rubbing against his shoulder with the weight of thimp horns, magical crystals, and the surprising amount of loot that Fiin continued to hunt out, the Frost Blades' archaeologist finding and solving puzzles that Rowan didn’t even notice.

Right at this moment, however, Fiin appeared stumped, the party having encountered a strange, circular door blocking the way. Covered in symbols, the door featured three prominent motifs: a stag, its head raised as it reared on its hind legs; a boar, its head low in submission; and a skeleton, on bent knee with sword offered reverently towards the stag.

“It’s clearly ancient Windian,” Fiin said, throwing her hands up in frustration as yet another spell did nothing to the door. “But I don’t recognize the figures. The Windians prayed to a pantheon of beast gods who were later usurped by the gods of the current northern pantheon; however, the skeleton doesn’t belong here. The Windian gods were overthrown after the fall of the Windian Empire, and their afterlife beliefs involved complete reincarnation. A skeleton worshipping them doesn’t make sense!”

“Perhaps it’s an enemy of the Windians?” Dillo asked, his arms folded as he stared at Fiin. “Someone they killed who wants revenge?”

Fiin shook her head. “That’s not a pose for revenge. If it wanted revenge, the skeleton would have its blade concealed, or a vial of poison hidden on its person. It’s definitely an enemy, but it’s one that is acting in a worshipful manner.”

None of the others had anything to say to this, their expressions tight as they glanced between Fiin and the door. They had been stuck here for nearly half an hour, and despite the great speed with which they had tackled the first floor, time was quickly running out.

Looking at the door again, Rowan was struck by a sudden resemblance to a scene he had witnessed before, lived through even.

Two years ago, a new gang had arrived in the west side of Taureen, disturbing the power structure among the street dwellers and forcing those in power to submit to them. The gang that had controlled the west side originally had fought back, only to end up being brutally crushed by the newcomers. Later they had discovered that the newcomers were bankrolled by a noble whose son had been targeted by the old gang, but that was in the past now, and largely irrelevant to the situation at hand. What was relevant was the pose the skeleton was in, the same pose that the defeated gang leader had been forced to take after their loss in the final brawl.

“Ummm…” Rowan began, uncertain of how to interject. Dillo’s visage was terrifying enough as it was without him saying something misleading here.

Hearing Rowan, Dillo turned his expression towards him, a look of annoyance crossing his face. Uncertain of whether or not to continue, Rowan hesitated. That was the look that the guards gave when dealing with the riffraff, the look that a superior used to quiet an underling, or a mother to discipline an unruly child. It was not an encouraging look, but one that told him to know his place, and a lifetime habit of obeying that imperative was difficult to break.

It was Stenne that came to his rescue, the tall healer seeming to have warmed up to him since he had fended off the thimp ambush meant for him in the crystal room earlier.

“You have something, Rowan?” Stenne asked.

“Maybe?” Rowan replied, doing his best to summarize his thoughts. He only had one chance to do this without annoying Dillo. He could not afford to ramble. “The sword could be an offering of peace, or ummm…” Rowan stalled, his hands gesturing as he tried to remember the word he had seen used in one of his history textbooks. “What’s that word for when a king has to serve another king?”

“Fealty?” Stenne offered.

“That’s it,” Rowan said. “Fealty. What if it’s a conquered people forced to abandon their old gods for the Windian’s?”

Fiin brightened at this, an excited look dawning on her face. “That’s possible! The Windians conquered quite a few people, and conversion was mandatory!”

Going quiet, she stared at the door, her eyes straying from the skeleton as she examined the rest of the motifs. Beside her, the others joined in, looks of uncertainty upon their faces as they did their best to help out.

Jaro seemed the most lost, clearly more suited to hacking enemies apart with his axe than to studying, but he did his best to help, standing next to Fiin but not close enough to bother her. Rowan also joined in, but he was similarly lost, knowing next to nothing about the ancient Windians of which Fiin spoke.

“I see!” Fiin’s sudden exclamation broke the silence. Rather than cast a spell, she instead dashed back towards the entrance of the room where a pile of discarded thimp bodies lay. With a knife, she chopped off the hand of one of the thimps, holding it away from herself with a look of disgust tinged with excitement as she returned to the group, blood dripping from the severed thimp hand leaving a crimson trail of droplets behind her.

“It’s not a magical door at all,” Fiin explained as she arrived back at the door, having seen the questioning expressions worn by her fellow party members. “The Windians required two things from defeated peoples. The first was to convert to their pantheon, which was mandatory for all who wished to join their empire. The second was slightly more obscure though, as it only related to warrior kings and queens, those who had led their people against the Windians in battle.”

“And that requirement was?” Dillo prompted, clearly attempting to speed up Fiin’s explanation.

“I was getting to that,” Fiin replied, flashing him an annoyed glance. “The second requirement was that those who led had their people to resist the Windian’s had to swear never to take up arms again. The Windians were not the most trusting lot, and their gods seemed to tend towards a more animalistic side as well, for obvious reasons, and so what that meant was more than simply giving up their weapons.” Pausing for emphasis, Fiin raised the thimp hand and offered the group a cheeky smile. “They also had to disarm themselves, literally.”

“Yikes,” Patri muttered, a sentiment echoed by Rowan.

Fiin shrugged. “It worked. The Windians’ undoing had nothing to do with any of the nations they conquered. They fell to an alliance of east and south that wiped them and their gods off the face of Medanas.”

“I’m still not getting it,” Dillo said. “How does this help us to open the door? Need I remind you that we’re on a tight schedule here and lecturing is something I get enough of at the academy.”

Jaro frowned at this, but Fiin simply let it go, opting instead to press the hand against the skeleton on the door.

With a shudder, the skeleton raised its sword, bringing it down heavily upon its skeletal arm, which fell to the bottom of the motif. As the skeleton’s blade came to a rest beside its arm, the stag landed back on its feet, its antlers growing to fill the circular frieze in which it stood. Quickly, the antlers expanded beyond the center, expanding to touch all parts of the door before them. As the last bit of antler touched the bottom of the door, it shuddered, groaning as it rolled to the side to reveal the passage beyond.