One of the two great doors of the gateway hung broken and tired at a possibly impossible angle. The other lay more certainly upon the ground, straggly grass curling up and over its edges in a grasping and wispy grab for sunlight. The place was in rough shape.

Ya know, Yenrab thought, shading his eyes from the glare of the overhead sun, it doesn’t look that dangerous. It just looks sad . . . and in need of a fix up!

They all stood clustered about the opening in a mob with Bern Sandros watching the right flank and Wex monitoring the left as Yenrab sheltered the spell casters Tracy and Carric in the center. They all stood in awe, mouths open and drooling.

An open air dungeon! Yenrab enthused, trying to put a positive spin on his earlier thoughts. No cobwebs, no goblin zombie lords or skullator gem monsters under tons of rock and dirt. Just a brisk jaunt through a disaster 20 years passed. We don’t need that stupid fireball spell. We’ve got this and then some!

The rest of the party EoTtHUaARB must have come to a similar conclusion because they oohed and aahed along with him at the adventure complex before them. They oohed because it lay completely deserted, filled with old and uninhabited buildings strewn throughout and peppered by thin reedy stalks of grass. They aahed because each and every one of them imagined individual specific treasures within each of those buildings, somehow ungotten by that legendary adventuring troupe, SOG. Then they shivered because the wind blew mournfully as if sad about the place’s tragic past. A shutter banged on warped hinges, turning smiles to frowns and giving the place a bit more character than any of them wanted it to have.

Yenrab stared daggers at Tracy as his emotional arc finished its rollercoaster course. He was back to feeling a mite grumpy about the needless waste of powerful magic.

“Tracy, ya know, we might well have needed that spell,” he nagged to the unlistening hippy from Freemeet. “I’m pretty certain the SOG didn’t all get lost. It’s not a big island.”

Tracy looked about, his goatee a blowing a little in the wind. He threw out his arms in an exaggerated gesture and scrunched his face in tremendous confusion.

“You hear anything?” Tracy yelled to no one in particular. “Because I sure don’t. I’ve got this thing, this curse, where I can’t hear nags or even recognize that they are there.”

Bern watched on with a small half grin playing at his lips. From the other flank of the group Wex snorted and then laughed, enjoying Yenrab’s discomfort.

The big half-orc sighed. Jerks he thought fondly, thinking over all they had already been through together.

“Well, someone tell Tracy to be careful anyways. We need to keep tactical,” Yenrab announced to them all, authority surrounding him. Then he paused and looked off for a bit. “Pillion isn’t around anymore to show us the ropes and, ya know, you all made me captain so let me captain us. Tracy stay in the middle, Carric move to the rear, Wex stay left, Bern stay right, I’m gonna stay as the front. Let’s move together and everyone keep a look out. Someone tell Tracy to tell someone to tell me since he can’t hear or even recognize that I’m here.”

“Maybe someone should tell someone to tell that nag that I can’t heat that maybe he needs to apologize?” Tracy stated to the sky, stroking his goatee in philosophical thought.

“Mates, maybe I should sneak around a bit and see what I can see?” Bern Sandros asked, a greedy glint in his eye.

“And deal with some accidentally summoned monster or demon for our troubles? Again?!” Carric laughed. “Once is enough of that, good sir.”

“Don’t call me sir. I work for a living,” Bern retorted.

“Power to the people!” Tracy agreed.

Doesn’t that power to the people stuff ever get old the Gamer Chief asked at some celestial table far away. Never replied the Gamers with a laugh.

“Look,” Carric said, his face now serious, “this place is strange and I don’t believe for one second that it is empty. Let’s listen to Yenrab and stay together. My bard powers work better with a group anyways. Maybe you can do sneaky rogue stuff when we get to the actual keep up ahead.”

He pointed to the far end of the complex. There the keep stood solid despite its age, grey stones with grey mortar for the gaps, nary a crack in sight. Only its gates looked warped and bowed, but they stood closed and were perhaps stout. It was hard to tell from this distance.

“Ag, man. Shame. Alright mate. I guess I can hold my horses til then,” Bern Sandros agreed. “We stay tight for some bliksem then I sneak when we get close. Got it.”

“Rattle ya dags, bro!” Wex stated, looking back behind them, where the plant life was slowly meandering over to where they stood. “Else we’re gonna cark it.”

“Um, right?” Carric agreed. The common tongue his friends used was sometimes quite foreign to him. But he thought he understood the context. “Let’s move on and let those plants lose interest then, shall we?”

With Yenrab in the lead the five of them headed forward, all tense and at the ready. Ahead the gloomy and fire blackened yet sturdy barracks houses of the immediate garrison hung dark and gritty, their very visage a warning to would be seekers of fortune. The shutters clacked again against their sides in the freshening gust of lake born wind.

“Maybe Bern really should go ahead and scout things out,” Wex suggested with a mask-hidden grin.

“Sard-off mate,” Bern chuckled. “If you thought it’d be safe you’d volunteer yourself off next to me.”

Carric smiled, “Sounds like neither of you has the guts to go forward.”

“Ya know, if I were mocked by a bard,” Yenrab nodded, to Carric’s drooping face, “I’d feel the need to push ahead and prove myself.”

A staccato of more distinct Gamer voices blasted into hearing. The party members winced.

That’s cruel, man.

Nah, that’s realistic. Bards suck.

You suck.

Your mo-

Guys stop it. Look, how about Carric goes forward and shows us what guts really are.

Okay, I guess I will!

“I, uh, I feel like I should have a bit more choice in this matter,” Carric protested to no one in particular. “But I guess it’s my turn in the forefront.”

“Carric! Carric!” Tracy cheered on in support. The bard gave him a panicked shush and hurried himself forward to get it all done with.

***

Carric stealthed ahead as well as he could. He couldn’t hear his own steps, so that was probably a good thing. The wind gusted again, briefly, as if in response to his brave foray forward.

This is not good. Not good not good not good he thought to himself in fright. He looked back at the party, growing a bit smaller as they got more distant. Tracy danced and waved.

He was next to the first of the two military structures. They weren’t that big, really, but he imagined that soldiers were like clowns in that they could all pile into those tiny enclosed carts in impossibly compact knots of people encompassing a hundred or so individuals. He certainly wasn’t looking forward to clacking a shutter fully open against the walls and poking his head in.

The bard took a quick stroll around the building, giving himself a quiet sigh as a gift for such bravery. Then, again in the eyes of the party, he fully opened one of the shuttered window apertures and peered inside.

The interior was filled with broken and splintered wood, the remains of the bunks and chests of the original defenders. They were indeed stacked together quite tight, perhaps capable of holding thirty defenders? It was hard to tell, though, because the place looked well smashed up and looted.

The bard looked back and yelled out to them.

“It’s well clear you bunch of yellow-bellied chickens. You are welcome.”

Yenrab started laughing, striding ahead in eager pace. There was some distant muttering, and also the loud cheering of Tracy, as they all moved forward.

That’ll teach them to besmirch my honor he chuckled to himself. Shown up and mocked by a bard?! How pathetic!

***

The party checked out both of the barracks buildings from the outside quite thoroughly before readying themselves for the interior. Whether it was the shame of being shown up by a bard or perhaps a lack of things to say nobody could tell you, but Wex and Bern kept their mouths shut through the whole process. It wasn’t until they were standing before the actual door to one of the structures that Bern, the noisier of the two, finally spoke.

“I’ve checked it this way and that, mates. Free from traps, good as platinum in my pocket. If there is anything dangerous here, it is going to be spooky and not at all in my department of things to deal with.”

Yenrab stretched and Carric swung his harmonica bar across his face, its burnished surface catching in the sun for a momentary bit of glare. Next to him Tracy rolled his hands in slow purpose around a dim and pulsing ball of flame. It was a definite zeroth level cantrip but something probably useful against all manner of spooky things.

“Well I guess now might be a good time for us to go in then?” the barbarian asked them all, looking back and forth between those on either flank.

Tracy shimmered by in rainbow-glittered robes, taking an advantageous angle. “Let’s do this,” the sorcerer grinned, glowing orb pulsating more brightly, possibly leveled up from its earlier state.

“Right. Yeah, ya know, I think I’d like it better if this place were full of zombies,” the big man complained in response. He reached one meaty hamlike hand forward though despite his reluctance and threw open the door. But there was nothing.

“Bro,” Wex whispered, “this is spooky.”

Then he found himself stumbling into the room, shoved by some unseen force. He looked back in panic and saw Bern Sandros stifling a laugh. The glee of the merry man was infectious and Wex smiled back while digging about quickly and thoroughly for hidden treasures. The rest swarmed in to do the same.

“I found a button,” Tracy called out in glee.

“Yuck,” Carric called out, holding a moldering scrap of soiled underpants.

“Well that’s enough of that,” Yenrab affirmed, waving everyone out. “We’ve still got a whole keep to search.”

***

The buildings closest to them were the stout and stone castle-like kitchen, some lanky and disused stables, and what looked to be the remains of a silo, one that must have been quite tall a few decades ago. At present, what was left of it was stunted, the majority of it having collapsed during the battle for the keep or soon after. It was at a distance but they could see that the silo was bereft of anything but a field of large mushrooms, growing through bare earth and out of the cracks of broken rubble.

“Jol!” “Mean as!” “Sweet!” the bard, the rogue, and the cleric all yelled at the same time, then laughed, making a beeline for the silo.

“Oh no,” Yenrab moaned, shaking his head slowly as the party hunched over their find, daggers in hand, ready to prune. “Not again,” he added, giving a bit of mystery to the interested reader as he or she or they hunched over the flickering light of their dying kindle, or the stout pages of the published novel.

Tracy eyed them over, the Gamer rolling enthusiastically as he tried to figure out what it was. The 20 sided die clicked and rolled off of the cosmic table.

“Noni Moss,” Tracy said, a 13 blazing in his mind’s eye. “Not a real moss, but one in name. Eating it makes you a bit wiser and have a good taste in novels for a while, but it’s not gonna get you all high.”

“Are you being straight up?” Wex asked, his eyes suddenly empty of their former joviality. “Brah, I really thought we had something here.”

“No worries, mate, this stuff here sounds good regardless,” Bern opined, to Yenrab’s nodding approval.

“Yeah, I bet we can sell it big at some market somewhere and use that money to get the good stuff,” Carric laughed, making the barbarian frown all over again.

The big guy didn’t stop them though from gathering all they could, stuffing one small travel pack and then the other full of the delicious-looking fungi. He too could hear the clink of gold coins in his head as the useful fungus was bottled, bagged, or otherwise stored.

Indeed, so absorbed were the party in the collection and perusal of the task at hand that they didn’t realize it when the ground behind them tore open, silent and deadly. Nor did they hear the click of bones and the rasp of dead flesh as zombies and skeleton crawled on out to do battle. They only realized their danger when Carric screamed, punched in the back of the head by a skeletal fist. He stumbled, but he did not fall.

Roll initiative! a distant voice called in their heads.

“To arms!” Yenrab yelled, fumbling with his axe straps in surprise.