Blink was utterly not happy that I turned a perfectly good meal into afoot. I wasn’t that pleased with myself either. That being said, I also wasn’t sure how I would have cooked any of the meat.

The dungeon had changed, and after the fight, I noticed it. The walls were now hard-packed dirt, and everything was more rounded than before. I went and looked at the area around where I was first hit. I wanted to know how the bashers had gotten the jump on us.

It only took me a few moments to find why. The sides of the tunnel had small holes everywhere. The holes were each just large enough for a basher but way too small for Blink or me. The poor lighting made it almost impossible to see the opening. Worse or perhaps better, we didn’t know which hole the dumb things would come out.

“Blink, do you think there are more in there?”

“Yess, hear thems,” She sent over to me with a slight hiss to join her mental comment.

“Great, so they can get to us whenever they want however, we aren’t going to be able to hunt them down.” I bemoaned.

Blink stared at me a moment, gave me one of her sassy blinks, and started to vanish, “Fun prey.”

I kept my sword out as we moved through the tunnel. Where on the other side it had been straight, this one started to snake through the ground. It twisted and turned, and even in some places, I was sure it doubled back while going deeper.

The whole time we were going, I would get peppered with quick little attacks from the bashers. They weren’t strong; the first only hurt me because of how it caught me. It was also three times the size of the others.

These would almost always attack my legs which were well defended. Each time I would try to kill it at that moment after it hit. The ones that attacked higher did a better job at messing with me.

If they attacked my chest level, they would use their little rodent claws to jump higher on me. There wasn’t much damage as I was wearing chainmail. However, if they got to my face, they would swat at me there.

More often than not, I would get to throw the basher against the wall. Around half the time, it would duck into a hole. The rest of the time, Blink or I would finish it and move on. With as armored as I was, there wasn’t much of an issue with taking damage.

After about an hour, the dungeon changed again. I noticed it this time because there was another set of stairs going down. I hadn’t seen anything that looked man-made other than the torches as we slaughtered our way down.

“Blink, do you know what we are getting into here?” I asked out loud.

I felt from behind me to the left and above her reply, “No.”

So either she didn’t remember, or this was something new. I didn’t know how dungeons worked and if they could just change things on the fly or if they were created and then turned into a dungeon.

However, once we passed the steps, we were out of the domain of the bashers and back to an area of cut stone. I felt like crap from what the bashers had done to me. No damage and no debuffs, but I was coming to find out that the same types of soreness that I could have on earth I could have here.

My greaves, while still doing their jobs, had gained dings all across them. Which, in turn, caused me to have little pains where they rubbed me funny. I would need to figure out a way to knock the dings back out when I found the next safe room.

This area of the dungeon was both like and unlike the first. It had the same cut and fit stones but was now more narrow where only one person could walk. At the beginning of this place, it was wide enough that a group of 5 could walk side by side. The torches had also spread out just a bit.

Whereas the first set of passages, the halls were straight and long. This went only a dozen yards before the first turn, and that provided two rooms, each with a wooden door. The doors were set on either side of the passage, which kept going until it made another turn just a few dozen yards away.

I had the choice to make. Do I move forward, or do I try the doors? If I go for the doors, which one first. Worse than that is the consideration of if the inhabitance of the other door would come out behind me.

I hated that I didn’t finish off the bashers. But I couldn’t get to all of them, so it wasn’t like I had much choice. This gave me a choice.

I started to mutter to myself, thinking through the problem out loud. It was a habit that I had gotten into from living so long by myself. Thinking by talking. What I wasn’t used to was having someone hearing me.

I felt a very exasperated sigh come from Blink, “open door.”

She was right, and I hated that I would overthink things. That being said, thinking through was a good thing. Just getting frozen in place wasn’t.

I sheathed my sword as it was easier to pull out than my hatchet and opened the door on the right. The handle was a simple ring that I turned and pushed in. I heard the creak of the door and a series of clicks.

The clicks didn’t sound natural, like a spider walking. They sounded more like a ratchet clicking. I threw myself back around the corner just in time to see a swinging mace come through the door.

It wasn’t a mace-like a person would use. No, this was a giant metal ball that was connected to a chain and had large spikes coming out of it. It reminded me of all the games I had ever played. After it swung for a few moments, it slowed, and I was able to safely look in.

The room looked like a room I would expect a medieval castle to have. There were two narrow, not quite twin-sized beds on one side. On the other side was a small two-person table and a bookshelf.

Rising from the table were two skeletons. Yup, they were standing up. Not that they were currently standing. No, they were getting up!

As they rose, I saw one pick up a rusty sword from the table. The other one turned and wrapped its bony fingers around a mace. They both moved at me with the speed of a fast turtle.

Each step toward me was a jerky motion. It was almost as if the skeletons were learning to walk as they came at me. The one with the mace even stumbled as it raised the mace over its head, throwing off its center of gravity.

Blink chose that moment to pounce. She hit Mr. Mace right in the sternum, blasting him back and causing his bones to scatter. It was amazing and beautiful. I smiled and started to advance even as the bones began to pull back toward the chair it had been in.

The sword guy swung at me, which I was happy to see was as pathetic of a swing as the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts. I caught his sword with mine and kicked out at his left leg. The bone went flying, and the skeleton fell over with the sword clattering to the ground.

Mr. Sword’s left arm popped apart as he hit the ground. Which caused him to fall onto his back, and then he started to roll toward his right so that he could get up.

Blink pounced from the moving pile of bones right into the spine of Mr. Sword. She landed with her claws sliding through the openings in the back, and she snapped her mouth down over the spine.

With a yank of her head, she ripped about 5 vertebrae right out from the magical spine. As her head cleared the ribcage, the whole skeleton fell apart.

We both backed up as we watched the bones start to slide across the ground toward the table. The mace and the sword began to slide as well.

I reached down and grabbed the rusty arming sword. As I did, I felt a tug from the sword’s point as it was trying to pull me across the floor. The more I pulled back, the harder the sword pulled toward the table.

I let go, and the sword went flying across the room to the table, where it landed as it had been when we came in. The mace went to the chairs and flipped up so that the head was on the ground and that the handle was resting on the table.

Blink and I watched as the bones all reconnected to each other. Then slightly faster than last time, the skeletons stood and advanced toward us.