The rumbling grew louder, the air got misty, and then we noticed pools of water on the ground fed by rivulets flowing down the passage.

Sonja grinned at me. “Weren’t we just talking about white water rafting?”

I just shook my head. I wasn’t worried about her speaking loudly since I doubted anything could hear us over the rumbling ahead.

And she was right. After a few more twists and turns and trudging through cold streams of water, we arrived at an opening blocked by a white wall of tumbling water. I borrowed Sonja’s torch and approached the exit carefully, trying not to slip on the smooth rock. I held the torch up to the white torrent but couldn’t see anything past it. Apparently, the cavern exited behind Niagara Falls. Not really, but you get the idea.

I poked my head out just in front of the water and looked to the left and right. A ledge about three feet wide curved off in both directions. When I looked down, all I could see was the white water tumbling into an abyss. Looking up just got cold spray in my face and not much information.

I went back to my friends and tried to pantomime what I saw. I gave a shrug that asked which direction. They both gave frustrated shrugs since this obstacle was new to them. I held up my right hand, indicating our RPG “right-hand rule” whenever we came to an intersection without an obvious choice. They both nodded in agreement. Stephen even waved his hand forward, motioning me to go first.

I grimaced and mouthed, Thanks.

I kept the torch up and then stepped onto the ledge to the right. It was about as smooth and slippery as I thought it would be, and I prayed my Dexterity saves were up to the task. I kept my back against the cold, wet stone and then inched my way along the ledge. Stephen and Sonja stepped onto the ledge, looking as nervous as me.

I focused on my feet and where I placed them. After about ten paces, I made the mistake of looking at the water plunging into the darkness an arm’s length from my face. Watching it fall like that made me dizzy, and I unconsciously leaned forward.

Stephen’s arm shot out and pushed me back against the rock wall. I stood there for a second to let my heart start beating again and then gave Stephen a nod of thanks. His responding glare would’ve contained many swears had he spoken it.

I continued shuffling along the ledge. The cold spray blinded me every few seconds, and I had to blink furiously to get the water out of my eyes. The spray alone had soaked me to the bone. My hair clung to my forehead and neck. Even with the physical exertion of keeping my body on the ledge, I began shivering from the cold water as it dripped down my back. It must’ve been just a few degrees above freezing. I thanked all the gods that were listening that I carried an eternal torch, for no mundane torch could’ve stayed lit in this. Otherwise, we would’ve been attempting this in pitch blackness

It took some time between forever and eternity for us to arrive at the end of the ledge. Or rather, arrive at a spot where we couldn’t continue. The ledge went on through a curtain of water that completely blocked our forward progress. I couldn’t see through it. The Pit of Despair could be on the other side for all I knew.

I gave Sonja and Stephen a shrug as I waved my torch at the water. Sonja gave her head an exasperated shake, but Stephen actually grinned and then patted his chest.

I got this, is what I assumed he meant.

Mace’s instincts perked up in a sour fashion at this, as it was apparent Stephen wanted to use Krait’s magic on the waterfall. I ignored Mace.

Stephen reached into one of his pouches, took out a pinch of gray powder, and placed it in his other open palm. The powder looked like some kind of crushed stone. Once he had enough, he licked every bit of it off his palm like it was sugar. Then he closed his eyes. His lips moved, but I had no hope of hearing what he said.

When he finished speaking, I felt sick, but noticed less spray hitting my face. I looked up to see the waterfall spray was indeed coming toward me, but it bounced off an invisible barrier that covered all three of us just above our heads. Water rolled off the barrier like it would a slanted pane of glass and fell into the abyss.

Stephen had made us an invisible umbrella.

He grinned and then motioned me forward. Mace gave me a momentary grumpy feeling just on general principle, but he didn’t try to stop me from taking shelter beneath a magical Krait shield.

I started moving again toward the curtain of water. As Stephen and Sonja matched my movements, the shield followed above our heads. When I got to the water blocking my progress, the invisible shield cut into the waterfall and deflected it off the ledge and away from us. Some water dribbled onto the ledge, but at least we weren’t getting crushed by a thousand pounds of water pressure.

The wall of water went on ten more feet before it ended. When I saw darkness ahead rather than water, I had to hold myself back from rushing forward. After we exited the waterfall, the ledge continued another twenty feet, but I couldn’t see anything beyond with my torchlight. As we moved further along, my torch illuminated where the ledge met up with a cliff that widened out to solid ground. I maintained the same sure pace, and we eventually stepped onto the wide cliff where we all collapsed onto the ground from exhaustion.

As I breathed heavily, I realized that I couldn’t stop shivering. Frigid water had soaked my clothes, and the air temperature on that cliff had to be a few degrees above freezing. My companions were in the same predicament: Stephen’s lips were blue, and the color had drained from Sonja’s face.

At least the water had washed away all the blood and dirt, but if we didn’t dry our clothes soon, we’d all have hypothermia.

“Got any drying spells?” I asked Stephen, still having to shout over the raging waterfall behind us.

“N-n-no,” he managed. “But I c-c-can make that r-r-rock warm.” He pointed to a large, flat boulder a few paces away.

“We need to d-d-dry our clothes, not rocks,” I said.

He snarled, “Warm r-r-rock dries c-c-clothes, idiot.”

And then my frozen brain kicked in, and I understood what he meant.

Sonja immediately started stripping off her leather armor, then her soaked under-tunic, and finally her breeches, all of which instantly made me forget about my impending hypothermia. The only thing she had on was her silver Comprehend Languages bracelet and a dark red tattoo of an upside-down triangle resting on a horizontal line on the side of her perfectly muscular right thigh. Even Stephen gawked at her sudden nakedness.

“N-n-now’s not the time for m-modesty, boys,” she said with her back to us as she laid her clothes flat onto the rock. “Hurry up, this is c-cold too.”

To stop from staring at Sonja’s incredibly toned body in the soft orange glow of her torchlight, I waved my torch around the area to make sure we weren’t about to strip naked in front of a bunch of monsters waiting to ambush us. A solid cavern wall stood twenty feet to my right, and our cliff sloped downward into darkness. Many rocks were lying about, but they were mostly basketball-sized, and I didn’t see any monsters ready to pounce. I looked over the cliff’s edge to see a river fifty feet below frothing away from the waterfall. It turned out the waterfall did not plunge into a bottomless pit after all.

By the time I had scanned the area, Stephen had already laid his robes flat onto the rock and stood on the other side of it from Sonja, wearing what looked like a white diaper. I assumed that was The Tomb equivalent of tighty-whities.

“Hurry up, p-p-pretty boy!” he growled.

I quickly doffed my leather armor, laid my cloak on the rock, and then stripped off my tunic and breeches, and discovered Mace preferred to go commando. I sighed, quickly spread everything onto the rock, and then stood on Stephen’s side without glancing at all in Sonja’s direction.

Stephen took what looked like a desiccated red pepper from a pouch, popped it into his mouth, and chewed fast. As he chewed, a black mist slowly formed around his eyes. The quicker he chewed, the heavier the mist got. He placed his hands on the large boulder, and I instantly felt intense heat coming from it. The boulder got so hot that I had to step away from it to avoid cooking.

As I stepped away, I glanced at Sonja, and I caught her staring at my body. When she noticed me looking at her, she stooped down so that I could only see her head above the stone.

“No gawking,” she growled, “this isn’t Porky’s.”

I wanted to tell her she should follow her own advice, but I checked my tongue. Besides, I was glad I caught her looking at me and not the other way around.

The steam rising from our clothes partially blocked my view of her head anyway. Stephen kept his hands on the boulder for another minute, his eyes obscured by that black mist until steam no longer drifted from the clothes. Then he pulled his hands away and started breathing heavily as if he’d just run a few sprints.

“Between the shield in the waterfall and this heating spell, my Magic Points are really low. We should rest an hour so I can recharge.”

Sonja and I grabbed our clothes simultaneously and did our best to avoid eye contact. My clothes were warm and dry like they’d just come out of a hot dryer. I put them on as fast as I could and wanted to sigh over how good they felt on my cold, wet body. The heat from the boulder had stopped me from violently shivering, but I was still cold and, well, I wanted to look Sonja in the eye again.

“How low are your Magic Points?” I asked Stephen.

But I never got an answer.

As I pulled my tunic over my head, what I could only describe as a green-skinned bigfoot dropped from the darkness above and landed just a few paces away with a considerable impact tremor. The monster was bipedal, had thick, muscled arms, and wore nothing on its torso, showing its massive, scarred green chest. It had large, pointed ears that hung down at the tips, and its black hair was tied back in a ponytail. The monster’s eyes gleamed red in the torchlight like a bear’s caught in headlights. It turned to me and released a grating bellow that was a cross between a lion’s roar and a goat’s bleating.

“Goblins!” Sonja cried.

More monsters dropped from the darkness, landing with heavy impacts and looking as monstrously huge as the first one. I counted six total that landed within moments of each other.

In the split second after the goblin roared at me, I thought, Okay, Mace, it’s your show now. Do what you gotta do so we can survive this.

I dove for my Ancestral Longsword, but the goblin nearest me took one leap and tackled me like an NFL linebacker. I didn’t get within arm’s reach of my sword. The goblin picked me up and started running with me pinned in its arms.

Right for the cliff.

I struggled to break the goblin’s grip with all my strength, but I was about as useless as a toddler against said linebacker. The goblin’s foul breath huffed in my face as it ran, and I desperately tried headbutting it in its bulbous nose. The nose broke, I could feel the crunch against my forehead and a spurt of blood on my face, but the goblin didn’t even grunt with pain. It just kept running.

And for the second time that day, a monster jumped into space with me in its arms.