I mutter out loud, having to voice my thoughts, “We really are in a dungeon, aren't we?”

We stand at the top of a wide ledge, a rough path of stairs carved into the wall.

Bellow us is a massive sandstone cavern, large natural pillars keeping up the roof that is covered in stalactites. In the cavern are dust, sandstone covered buildings, many of them having been petrified. Fungi grow over the floor like a carpet, slowly creeping up along the walls of the buildings and cavern.

The cavern spans far into the distance, so much so that even with my dark vision it fades away into blackness.

Kamar rumbles softly, “What do you see?”

I lean into his ear, not letting my gaze draw away from cavern, “A city.”

I can see that many of the buildings have crumbled with time and that sections of the cavern has collapsed.

A large boom echoes as a tremor runs through the ground, Kamar crouches down, ducking. Dust dislodges itself from the tunnel mouth we are standing in, falling on my head and back.

The earth groans, and I look up in horror as a large crack in the tunnel mouth grows wider. The blocks around it start crumbling, the crack spreading to inside the tunnel.

I shout, “Move!”

I push at Kamar, and he leaps forward into the petrified city. Kamar shifts the bag into his second pair of arms, hoping forward on all fours, boosting us further into the city.

I can hear a crack and a crash as the tunnel behind us collapses in on itself. I look over my shoulder as a cloud of dust plumes outward, flowing into the air in a brown explosion.

Kamar shifts himself back up, turning around to look at what was our way out. A few rocks shift, sliding down. One comes spinning out of the dust, plinking on the floor and bouncing to a stop at Kamar’s feet.

The cloud of dust quickly settle, revealing the mound of ancient stone.

Kamar holds up his jar of glowing fungi, which looks like a miniature star in my sight, to illuminate the blocked exit.

He says in a far louder voice, “Gods dammit!”

I can’t help agree with him, we are now trapped.

Looking over my shoulder, I can see the petrified city. There are mushrooms down here, which means there must be someplace they are getting air. And if the other two tunnels from the fork are any indication, thee umber hulk must have dug several ways out.

I say in a normal tone of voice, “There’s other ways out. The umber hulk is bound to have dug several entrances into here.”

Kamar grunts, lumbering over to the pile. He shakes his head, “We definitely aren’t getting out this way.”

I can agree with that assessment. Tapping Kamars shoulder, I point in the direction of the stairs, “There are stairs over there, they lead down into the city.”

Kamar nods, lumbering over to them with the backpack clutched to his chest. He holds the light out in his massive hand, illuminating the stairs. He starts walking down them slowly, and I can see he is listening for anything.

After a few seconds, he rumbles over his shoulder, “Kardin, what does it look like down there?”

I glance down into the city, and the fungi that has blanketed the floor and the petrified buildings. “It looks ancient, the buildings seem to be encased in stone. There’s also a lot of mushrooms. I don’t see anything moving.”

I keep my eyes peeled on the ground below. We want to know if anything is going to try and attack us.

I didn’t want to encounter the umber hulk. It sounds like a nasty creature, and if Kamar had difficulty fighting it, I am most assuredly not going to have any luck.

I close my eyes briefly, lathering another layer of Gray Life katra onto my broken bones. The muscles have healed and now, if I have to guess, I can get my bones fixed within an hour. Then I don’t have to piggyback on Kamar anymore.

Opening my eyes, I look down at the stairs, which curve into the cavern wall, forming a small platform and then going down in the opposite direction in a zigzag formation.

I get a case of deja vu. This is like when I entered Inik’s cave.

We soon reach the bottom of the stairs, and Kamar sets one of his feet down into the fungi. I watch as it lights up around his foot, rippling out in a wave of light and quickly illuminating the floor in a blue not dissimilar to that of the fungi in the jar.

It stops several feet away, and the fungi slowly fade back to darkness.

“Interesting,” Kamar mumbles as he takes another step forward. Another wave of light spreads out, like a ripple in a pond.

It’s kind of pretty.

The air is musty and smells faintly of rot.

Kamar keeps walking forward, a trail of light slowly fading out behind us. We walk slowly, and I keep my eyes on the buildings in front of us. Many of them seem to have been coated in a layer of uneven sandstone and I can see the signs of disrepair. I can’t see any wood and I can only assume that it has all rotted away.

This place must have been here centuries.

We stop a few feet from the edge of where the mostly intact buildings start, a pile of rubble off to the left is what I can only assume was once a house. It looks like this portion of the city was cut off, and I glance back up where we came. A long ledge rings around this side of the cavern wall, and I can see it has been broken off in places. Bricks in disarray line the side of the wall, like they have been trapped within the earth.

If I try hard enough, I can make out what was once a large wall, a piece of it embedded into the cavern.

In in the name of the Gods could do this?

It looks like something tore through the wall, and this is just a fragment of it that has been cemented into the earth. This place must have become buried over the centuries, and petrified due to all the limestone and sandstone.

I remember back to my most recent encounter with Inik. The story did say he is responsible for making the Rua Desert.

So could this be a city he destroyed? It would make the most sense.

I can barely fathom the power necessary to cause this much widespread destruction. And if the overhead tremors from what I assume is his fight far away are any indication, he is using some of that power right now.

Let's hope the cavern doesn’t collapse on us.

Kamar keeps walking after scanning the surroundings, moving deeper into the petrified city. He moves over to a building, where a pile of melted and solidified rocks sits melded with a wall.

I look at it closely with Kamar, and twitched as the shape of the pile becomes clear in the light.

Kamar says it simply, “It was a person.”

I can make out the vague shape of legs, a head and an arm from the solidified stone. Looking up, I can see a rather large stalactite has melded itself over the centuries with the roof, flowing down and encasing the remains of this person.

“We need to find a way out of here, incase the cavern caves in from Inik’s fight.” I say, urging Kamar on.

The asper nods, moving away from the petrified corpse.

We wander further into the decrepit city, and I can make out the petrified remains of various things. Like that of what I can assume was once a tree, all the leaves gone and its limbs eroded down to nubs. There are also a few more of the fossilized corpses.

The eerie silence and light from the mushrooms gives this place a solemn feeling. I can feel my back muscles tensed up, ready for anything to come.

Kamar steps through the floor covered in mushrooms, traveling down what I can vaguely make out is a shattered street. We follow it’s bends for a few minutes, till it eventually opens up into a large plaza.

A fountain coated in large mushrooms sits as the centerpiece, thick, fleshy life roots wrapped around it and traveling down into the blanket of small mushrooms on the cavern floor.

There are many paths branching off from here, further into the petrified city.

I marvel at the fact that all this has survived for so long. I would have thought most of the ruins would have been buried under the sand, not petrified in a cavern.

Kamar mumbles under his breath, “Gods, be with us.”

I look at where he is looking, down at his feet. There is a person shaped mound covered in mushrooms. My eyes travel over it and onto the next, and the next, and the next. The entire plaza is covered in the petrified remains of human beings.

So many dead…

I don’t try to count the massive number of people that had died here. It's too gruesome. There must be hundreds.

A good portion of the city must have run here for safety, only to die quickly after. From what, I am not sure.

I tap Kamar, saying, “Let’s keep moving.”

He nods, carefully walking through the piles of petrified corpses. We both stay quiet in a solemn silence. We pass by the fountain of fungi, which start glowing brightly as we near them.

I look at them as we pass. There are several varieties of mushrooms, all having gorged on something in the fountain to grow this size. I wonder how these things got down here.

They were definitely of the same kind that Kamar was using for a light. I poke one, and watch as it’s cap lights up a neon blue.

I blink, watching as little pores on the undersides of the caps of the giant mushrooms open, little blue motes pouring out.

“Uh, Kamar?” I say, motioning to the motes as he turns to look. They start to disperse through the air, floating out in a circle.

The asper turns and take several steps back, several motes of light landing on the mushrooms. I watch as those lights die out quickly, and the smaller mushroom opens its own pores, small mites of blue flowing out of it.

“Spores! Cover your mouth! Don’t breathe!” Kamar says quickly, taking a deep breath, holding it.

I take a deep breath of musty air, sucking oxygen into my lungs and holding my breath. I watch as the blue glowing spore keep multiplying, spreading out and landing on the smaller mushrooms and setting off a chain reaction.

I bring the face mask of my head wrapping up over my nose, covering my mouth. Kamar wraps his shirt around his nose and mouth, tying it off quickly. I keep holding my breath, ignoring the growing pressure in my chest.

Kamar starts moving towards the edge of the plaza quickly, but the spore quickly outpace us, floating up into the air, and twirling above our heads. They stir at our passing, moving towards the air current.

These are most definitely not normal spores!

I frantically tap Kamar on the shoulder, urging him to go faster.

One of the spores lands on the back of my right black clothed hand, and I feel a sharp as the light flickers out. Like a shock of electricity.

I stop myself from yelping at the pain. Ouch!

I look over my shoulder at the gathering swarm of spores, they are twirling in the air as if they are alive, spiraling deliberately towards us. Gods!

Kamar moves into a lumbering running, not longer caring about the spores he is kicking up or the petrified bodies. I keep my head down, making sure that the spores can’t hit my head.

I watch as they go whipping past, a few landing on my clothes and zapping me.

Kamar reaches the other side of the plaza, bursting onto a narrow street. He immediately moves to a petrified door. Pulling back his fist, Iron katra rippling in the air around it, he slams it into the stone.

There is the clang of steel hitting rock and a crack. The stone door collapses in on itself, and Kamar barges through into the dank interior of the building.

I look behind us as more spores keep lifting themselves into the air, chasing after us.

The swarm of them is going to arrive any second, and I am sure that it will have enough capacity to kill us.

Kamar grunts, and shifts quickly over to a nearby petrified table, he grips the edges, and rips it from the ground with the crack of stone. He swings it around, slamming it over the where the door used to be, blocking it.

Darkness quickly envelopes us, and I let out a sigh of relief, gulping in air. By the gods, this is definitely some kind of twisted dungeon!

I look around where we are, it’s some time of small shop. Only now everything is coated in a layer of dust and limestone. I can hear the dripping of water in the far back, behind the counter.

And I thought I had learned my lesson last time. I chuckle a little, I’d once again leaped without looking and touched that mushroom.

Kamar curses.

I follow his gaze and I can feel the blood drain from my face.

Long, deep gashes mare the walls and floor, and they look rather fresh too.

Claw marks.

I mutter very quietly, “I think we found its lair…”