The crooked end of a witch’s hat bobs through a shroud of thick green smoke. Bones rattle from inside as the cloud grows thicker and thicker, flecks and flickers of of opalescent mana floating through and towards the center, like a galaxy folding in on its self, about to-

Whack!

The fog is blown away by the swing of a great axe, sending the bones from within flying. They bounce across the grassy ground, resting only a moment before disappearing into nothingness.

At the same moment, a young woman shrieks in frustration.

“Branimir, you idiot! I have to summon her out here first!” The young woman in question has the build of a mage, with armor to match both her class and the toxic green color of her magic. Her tutu-like ruffles bounce as she stomps a thigh-high booted foot and for good measure reaches out towards the axe weilding offender to give him a smack on the arm.

“Actually, you don’t.” Branimir stows his great axe and crosses his arms, not seeming to have felt the slap through his mountains of armor. “We are literally just junking inventory and swapping gear. You do not need a minion for that.”

“This way I don’t have to do it later and my mana regens while we shop.” She whines more. It would still have to now, without the benefit of already having summoned her minion, saving her magical energies for other spells.

“This way somebody gets to flirt with the no necromancy in the city rule…” A smaller woman almost seems to materialize out of thin air. In contrast to the green frills, she’s wrapped nearly tip to toe in loose black, with the odd deep crimson accent. And while the necromancer’s skin was pale like porcelain, what could even be seen of the rogue’s was more grey in nature.

“It’s a stupid rule!” The adornments on the necromancer’s armor jingle almost like bells as she stomps her foot again. “And besides, the bounty wears off if you wait long enough.”

“Oh come on Graverra,” Branimir growls, exasperated maybe both because they’d had this conversation before and that they had to have it at all. “Nobody wants to wait out a bounty with you.”

“I don’t have one right now!”

“We are right outside the gate!” He gestures directly to the group’s left, where indeed the city gate sits.

Meanwhile, Valerea rubs at her forehead. “There is literally a guard around the other corner and you know this.”

Graverra rolls her eyes, then sneers in Valerea’s direction. “Oh, like you aren’t going to hit up some townsperson for some neck sucking.”

Valerea’s grey cheeks almost regain some color. “That’s different.”

“Yeah, how else is she supposed to keep her stamina up?”

“Don’t they make potions for that?”

“Nobody has time to level Alchemy, Graverra. Unless you’re volunteering.”

“All that mana and no heals…” Valerea says under her breath.

“Oh my gods Val, I have picked you up so many times! I have to kill stuff with the scythe if you want the healing to trigger! It’s basic necromancy!”

“Say it a little louder, ‘Verra, I don’t think everyone heard how cool and edgy you are.”

“Not this again…”

“It’s not about that! I do just as good damage as you and I can heal, and I’m not completely incapacitated by fire damage!”

“Just as good? Ha!” Valerea clutches her stomach like she’s really about to laugh. “Yeah, maybe if you ever learned how to weave properly.”

Graverra balls her fists at her side and growls, too overcome with frustration to even find words.

“Yes, you’re both very scary.” Branimir interjects in a monotone and steps between the two. “Really though, can we please just run errands and get back to questing?”

“I could have been done by now…”

Graverra looks up at Branimir, but when he doesn’t seem to care either way…“Well, then just go then!”

“Graverra…”

“No, no, you go on, I’ll be out here. Quietly. By myself. No party. No minions.”

Valerea huffs and rolls her eyes.

“Yeah and you’re gonna get bored and pull aggro and come crying to me anyway. Just come with us, real quick.”

“Well, you know…” Graverra can’t help her voice lifting a few octaves, even though she definitely wasn’t about to cry. And she certainly didn’t care if Branimir noticed or not. “Maybe it’ll be good practice for me and my stupid timing!” To emphasize her point, she pulls out her own scythe, swinging at them harmlessly, but the force of it all is enough to send Graverra stumbling into the nearby city wall.

At least, she knows she should have.

The last thing Graverra hears or sees before falling into darkness is her party’s gasping, startled faces. It served them right.

Despite how she’d fallen before, Graverra lands flat on her chest with an ‘umpf!’ and a puff of dust all around her. The brim of her pointed hat doesn’t allow for her to see where she’s fallen until she sits up to adjust it.

“Hello…? Guys?” The space around her looks nothing like just outside the city gates. A crooked beam holds juts out of the wall beside her, rock and rubble lay piled up along the bottom of the wall. The sound of water dripping from somewhere further ahead echoed off the tunnel walls, while the dimmest of torchlight flickered around her.

If she didn’t know any better, Graverra might have thought she had just walked into a dungeon… But turning around behind her, there was no entryway, no quest giver. There was hardly any theming beyond the fact that it was obviously meant to be some kind of abandoned mine shaft… and that could have been any number of dungeons she’d been through.

As Graverra stands, the typical sound to signal her entry into such a place reverberates through the tunnel, but no title or description follows.

“Buggy…” She mumbles as she finishes brushing herself off. Nothing to panic about, though she hoped the startle might work in her favor with her party. She didn’t have to put up with their negativity, and then where would they be?

Graverra summons her map to her hand and unfurls it, picking out the port in the city they had all just been trying to enter. They’d probably gone in without her by now anyway…

You cannot fast travel while enemies are nearby.

“But there… aren’t.” She frowns down at her map, but when she looks up again, back down the dark tunnel, it’s tinged with worry. How was she supposed to go crying back to Branimir if there were enemies nearby? Not that she did… very often… but it would serve him right this time.

Before stowing her map, Graverra tries to locate herself. Maybe she was simply at the back of some dungeon she’d already run? But when her marker finally shows, the rest of the page is blank…

“I’ll show you useless class, Val…” She grumbles and summons back her scythe. The blade glows a faint green ahead of her, further lighting the way.

She doesn’t actually need her party anyway. She could already hear Branimir getting on her case for wandering off, even though this time clearly wasn’t her fault.

Something hisses from further ahead. Graverra holds her scythe up at the ready, back on high alert… But all that barrels down the tunnel is a rodent. A bit large for a rat, maybe decaying? But not enough to make it truly undead - she would know, after all.

“Really?” When it comes within range, Graverra flicks the rodent up in the air with the flat on her scythe blade, bouncing it once before batting it into the cave wall to disintegrate into a puff of blue mana. If she had taken any damage, it would have gone to heal herself first, but as XP it’s a pittance she hardly feels the effects of.

Graverra flicks her wrist and the map again replaced her scythe. If this was all that was keeping her from porting back to the other’s…

You cannot fast travel while enemies are nearby.

“Where?!” Graverra banishes her map again as she howls down the tunnel. “Are you seriously going to just send one rat at a time until I walk out of here?!”

She continues stomping down the tunnel, hoping at least to trigger them a little quicker if that really were the case.

“No wonder I’ve never been down here before.” She sends a puff of necrotic energy down the tunnel, even if it is a waste. She’d get it back in a few moments, and it wasn’t like she had any real mobs to contend with now. “This is just pitiful.”

Something from further ahead chuckles in response. Graverra slows to a stop, head tilting even as she holds her scythe back up in defense. Was she supposed to groan at that dramatic timing or genuinely feel afraid?

“Don’t let me stop you, girlie.” Whoever it was called back.

Graverra gripped her scythe a little tighter.

“No, I mean seriously, keep walking.”

Not particularly interested in doing what some gruff sounding, disembodied voice in a strange dungeon told her to do, Graverra hesitates a little longer. Unfortunately for her, there seemed to be only one way to go…

It was only a few more steps until things changed. Once again unimpressively. A small alcove opened up to Graverra’s right, with torches highlighting it on either side and one on its back wall. It might have been the sort of place an important item would be set, but all it really held was another pile of rubble. Hardly worth a stop to look…

A wolf whistle stops Graverra to search for its source. Unconsciously, Graverra tugged at the hems of her fluffed up petticoats. It isn’t her fault the class appropriate armor looked like this.

“Over here, lady.” The voice doesn’t echo anymore. “Down here.”

Graverra squints down into the alcove and when nothing specific pops out at her, she sends the end of her scythe in to poke around.

“Watch it!” The point of her blade loosens a clump of rocks, but it’s a skull that comes tumbling down to her feet. Now further away from the torchlight, she can see the opalescent shimmer of mana around it.

“Are you the reason I can’t get out of here?”

The skull wobbles a little as its jaw moves, “Probably.”

Graverra raises the butt of her scythe, meaning to just crush the thing and be done with it.

“Whoa whoa whoa! Hang on! You still aren’t getting out of here after me!”

“Why not?”

“Bossman won’t like it.”

Graverra puts the fist not holding her scythe on her hip. “So there is a boss in this dungeon?”

“Well…” The skull draws out the word until Graverra applies a little more pressure. She didn’t need some bodiless skull to help her through a buggy dungeon. “No real boss yet, but you still won’t get out your way.”

Graverra frowns. “What way do I get out then? How is there no boss in a dungeon?”

The skull chuckles and she thinks about crushing him again, but then she wouldn’t get her answers. She mumbles a quiet little ‘uhg’ at the fact that what was obviously his stupid plan was actually working.

“Well, how’d you get into the dungeon?” He asks like that wasn’t her first thought too.

“I seem to have fallen in.” She answers through grit teeth.

“Oh boy…”

“What?”

“Core’s not gonna like that. Probably his own fault to begin with, but between you and me, I don’t think he wants to hear that.”

“Core?” She removes the scythe from crushing position. The stupid skull really had her interested now.

“Yeah, core. The things that make the dungeons work.”

Graverra snorts, “Well, this one sure doesn’t-“

“Shh. We know, we know. He’s new at this, alright? Cut him some slack.”

It was probably another situation that should have frightened her, or at least confused her, but Graverra’s eyes light up with a different thought. “This is a new dungeon? Nobody’s ever cleared it before?”

“Nobody’s ever been down here before you, girlie, keep up. It’s not done. There’s no way in… And no way out. Unless the core makes it.”

“Well, why doesn’t it just make one?”

“Are you not listening? The dungeon isn’t done yet.”

“Well, how long until it is?”

“Guess that’d be a question for the core, now wouldn’t it?”

Graverra’s other fist, still around the scythe, comes to rest on her hip. “Is this your way of saying you’ll take me there? Is that a thing we can do? Just… talk to a dungeon’s core?”

The skull chuckles again. “Well, not just everyone, but I get the sense you’re a certain kind of special, aren’t you girlie?”

“Well… Yes.” If anyone had ever pointed it out to her before, it was usually a snide thing meant to make her feel bad, but being first in a dungeon that wasn’t even done yet had to prove otherwise. “And my name is Graverra.”

“Yeah, this’ll be good. Come on then, girlie, pick me up and I’ll take you there.”

Graverra frowns again, not particularly enthused at being ignored like that, but bends down to pick up the skull anyway.

Equip ’Basic Skull’ as companion?

[Y]/N

“Alright, Skully…” She adjusts so that he rides up on the brim of her hat.

“Whoa now, you aren’t gonna call me that. Have a little creativity, the bossman’ll like that.”

Graverra rolls her eyes.

Rename ‘Basic Skull’ companion: Capo

“Oh yeah,” The skull jostles her hat as he settles in. “The core’s gonna get a kick out of you.”