“Ah,” the black-furred rat says grimly. “It’s one of these dungeons.”

“Puzzles are my favorite!” spits back the spear-wielding rat. “Don’t be rude to the core!”

“The core has our queen’s body!” the leader snaps. “I’ll be as rude as I desire!”

“Hey, not to break up the conflict or anything, but who are you guys anyway,” interjects the more physically fit of the two indecipherable creatures.

The rats look at each other, and walk into the room.

Checking the corners immediately for traps, the creatures discover a smashed open chest in each corner, as well as one between a stone pedestal and an open doorway straight ahead.

Chittering a command, the black-furred rat gestures to the room. The smallest of the rats stays at the entrance, watching for any unexpected eventualities, like the human returning to kill them. As the bulk of the force group together and investigate the area, the tag-along pair finally make their way into the cave as well. The rat eyes them warily, but as they aren’t humans they have slightly less inclination to attempt to block their passage with their bare paws than to let them deal with the warriors in person.

Investigating quickly, the rats locate a collection of symbolized tiles from the rightward room, bring them to the left room’s indented tile-holder, and put off trying to solve the puzzle to explore the last remaining open door from the first chamber. A large hole in the center of the room is most certainly not covered by a red carpet of some sort, and far more imposingly is a large stone door crossed with indentations of three triangles, each of which bears a keyhole, and covered with runes.

"Oh dear," says the brown rat with the spear.

Just to contribute to the conversation, the blue-brown furred rat adds, "This puzzle seems like a lot of unnecessary effort."

Sighing a bit, the brown rat speaks to the leader.

“I see that there’s a secondary hole in the side of that hole. There’s a chance that the hole hole has something hidden inside of it, so if you can check to see if there is a quick and easy solution to this key situation in the same room as the door, I can take Trena and investigate the rest of the dungeon.”

The black-furred rat nods his assent, and the brown-furred rat takes Trena back to the main room, where the non-rats stand around loitering and being useless.

“EXPENDABLE MONKEY THINGS,” comes a call from that room.

“Yeah, that’s definitely us,” the larger one mentions off-handedly to the other. The two head in to see what the leader is shouting about.

“Big hole, empty inside. You go,” the black-furred rat tells them.

"Sure, just a minute while I go grab one of those fire-sticks," replies the smaller one, before moving to the wall and grabbing one of the convenient torches. It struggles for a bit to remove it, before realizing that they just lift out of the rings.

“Here, hold this for me,” it says, putting the stick in the larger creature’s hands.

“Oh, okay, thanks,” that one says absent mindedly, before the rat yells again.

“Go down!” they shout, pushing the creature into the hole.

Falling for a good three quarters of a second, the expendable monkey thing remembers its training and lands completely flat against the ground.

"It's a hole all right,” it says a second later, looking around in the light. "There's a hole in this hole. That's just poor hole maintenance."

"Idiot," hisses the rat. "Want you go down second hole."

"Go down the second hole you moron," translates the creature outside of the hole, helpfully.

"You do it!" retorts the larger one.

"Don't make me go down there and push you!" threatens the one with the high ground.

"Like you could," taunts the one whose power is being underestimated.

Jumping down into the pit gracefully, the creature comes down with a gravity assisted punch. From its prone position, the larger one grabs the falling arm with its tail, pulling the attack off course and letting the creature complete its unmodified decent directly into the ground with its face.Standing up, it casually sweeps the smaller creature into the hole hole, and looks up to the rat above.

“Done.”

"Toss torch, at least," says the rat.

Responding near instantly, it tosses the lit stick down onto the creature below.

"Ow fuck I'm on fire now!"

The rat shakes their head, sighing.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Seeing that the humans have most definitely left for the woods, the scrawny rat releases the blue eyeball, which starts floating around the room, and wanders into the center of the room toward the dais. It has a number of symbols on it, and blocks of various shapes. In addition, there are similar blocks littering the ground. Passing by, the brown rat and Trena head into the room full of lit torches and braziers, and take the first turn into a new room.

Pillars block most straight paths through the room, and a hole in the ground prevents access to the back left corner of the room. Directly ahead of the rats is a giant stone block. Taking a few moments to investigate the arrangement of pillars, the brown rat tells Trena to stand in an alcove near an unlit brazier and a giant spiderweb. Once they are in position, it pushes the block easily to the wall, locking her on the opposite side from the pit. At that point, Trena takes over the pushing, and shoves the block into the block-shaped hole, whereupon a chime rings out of nowhere and a key drops from the ceiling beyond the filled pit.

“This seems oddly simple. I'm unsure of whether it is a trick or not," comments the brown rat.

"What is simple about it?" questions the Trena.

Unwilling to stop and explain all the logical steps it would take to solve a block pushing puzzle, the puzzle-solving rat simply collects the key, decorated with an inlay of a shield, and brings it over to the central chamber.