***** Amandine’s POV 3:00 PM *****

With the immediate crisis resolved, I was finally able to turn my attention to the room that we found ourselves in.

My first impression was that it was well lit and absolutely massive, far larger than any room that I’d ever been in. The only room that even came close was The Throne Room in The Royal Palace, but even that was only one quarter the size of this room. Even considering that this is the Entrance Hall of a dungeon, which tend to either just barely exist or be way over the top, I had not been expecting a space twenty meters wide and tall and roughly 50 meters in length.

It was also full of riotous greenery, even more so than the jungle we had just left. Almost every single surface was covered in some sort of plant life, and there was a profusion of planter boxes everywhere that contained the larger rooted plants.

What really set this room apart from the forest outside was that this was only a small fraction of the greenery.

Most of the plants were actually floating through the air above head height in ridiculously complex patterns that simply had to be choreographed. I’m not sure what the purpose of these plants was, but I don’t think they were here for us to interact with. Not when they never came within three meters of us and somehow managed to avoid blocking our sightlines despite being every freaking where.

Scattered around the room seemingly at random were these odd metal mushroom things that were continuously spewing miniature lightning bolts. These lightning bolts seemed to be the source of the peaceful serenade gently tickling our eardrums while still filling the room with sound. What made it even stranger was that I could have sworn I heard the sound of multiple different instruments in the serenade, but all I could detect were the continuously pulsing lightning bolts. The one thing that made sense about these mushrooms was the holes in the greenery that was just large enough to keep it clear of the lightning.

There were seven doorways not counting the entrance itself, each of which was clearly labeled with glowing letters floating in front of them. Starting on my left and going sunwise around the room, these signs read Hall of Heroes, Men’s Locker Room, Fighting Rooms, Courage and Trust Rooms, Puzzle Rooms, Women’s Locker Room, and the Memorial of the Fallen.

All of this was second-hand observations provided by whatever it was that our curse was turning into. I wasn’t used to it, and I didn’t trust it completely, but I’m fairly certain it wasn’t trying to lie to me. That’s simply not part of the nature of what it had become.

My eyes, however, were drawn to the focal point of the room, a pair of statues standing side by side in the middle of the only sizeable section of the room that was completely free of greenery. The larger of the two statues was something that I’d never seen before. For the most part, it resembled a six-limbed Kodiak with scales instead of fur, not to mention the hands it had instead of front paws. If it hadn’t been posed in the middle of waving hello at us with one of its hands I never would have noticed the extra thumb it had on both sides.

The thing that truly set it apart from any animal I’d ever heard of before was its head, which was shaped like a six-sided pyramid with the base connected to its neck. The bottom side of the pyramid was clearly the mouth, while the sides immediately above and to either side had slits that looked like nostrils. The sides above the nostrils held the eyes, leaving just the top side that was covered with a series of bumps that seemed to serve no purpose I could fathom. I didn’t see anything resembling ears, but I’m not sure what a reptile’s ears look like, so I could have been missing them.

The other statue was more along the lines of what I was expecting in that it was clearly a dungeon fairy with bright red hair and a bronze skin-tone, but everything else about it was strange. The most obvious difference was the size, as most dungeon fairies are twelve to twenty centimeters tall, but this one was roughly twice the size of an average human, making me wonder what scale these statues were constructed to. The second difference was her outfit, which was some sort of one-piece garment in black and blue that had a variety of pockets and hidden features. There was something else about her that was different, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what exactly that might be.

The last thing that made the statues stand out was the faintly shimmering blue dome separating the statues from the rest of the room, which I assumed to be a shield of some kind.

“Bonheir, Smurkle, take your squads and check the rest of the room for traps,” I said, naming two of Doskan’s assistants. “Don’t touch that shield. Doskan, once they’ve cleared a path to the shield and room for you to work, check the shield. Make sure that those statues aren’t going to ambush us.”

“Ma’am, this is the Entrance Hall,” replied Bonheir, “The dungeon cannot place any sort of traps in here. Nor can it put traps in the locker rooms.”

“Oh? How do you know this?”

“Traps are what we do Ma’am,” answered Smurkle. “A lot of the best trap designs are found in dungeons. Most journeyman trap designers spend enough time in dungeons learning about traps that we have a fairly decent idea about where dungeons won’t place traps.”

“Good to know. Are there any other places that you know won’t have traps?”

“The rest areas along the way should be safe as long as we don’t break them just for the sake of breaking things,” answered Smurkle.

“The Memorial of the Fallen probably won’t have traps as that isn’t the point of the room,” added Bonheir. “I’m not sure what the Hall of Heroes is for, but I don’t think there will be any traps in there either.”

“Based on the Prophetic Ramblings we were given as intel, I don’t think either of those rooms are part of the way forward,” interjected Dronheimor, our senior scout and intelligence agent. “Nor do we have to worry about those statues. All that Lord Ubaro told me about them is that they won’t be active for quite some time, whatever that means.”

“Okay…” I said, slightly confused. “What else can you tell me about these ‘Prophetic Ramblings’?”

“I will tell you more when I think you need to know more Ma’am. Remember, The Prophecy was written by the ancients, the ones who left ruins scattered across the jungle.”

“This is significant why exactly?”

“Oh right, Lord Ubaro intentionally kept you in the dark more than he did us. To answer your question, The Prophecy doesn’t like it when people that it directly mentions learn too much of what it says about them before that portion of The Prophecy has come to pass.”

“Wait, are you saying that Lord Ubaro read too much of his part of The Prophecy so it broke his mind?”

“Yes, Ma’am. The only reasons that I know as much as I do are that I’m never directly mentioned, and I learned what I know secondhand from Lord Ubaro. He also made sure that I had some meditation techniques to limit the amount of time I spend thinking about the bits and pieces that I do know. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to meditate for a couple of moments.”

“Go meditate then,” I said in dismissal. “Doskan, anything to report?”

“This shield is unlike anything that I’ve ever seen before. The energy patterns that it is using are so complicated and finely woven that I can barely tell that they’re there! I really wish that I had the tools to examine this properly, but that will have to wait for another expedition in a couple of decades.”

“What do you mean ‘in a couple of decades’?”

“At the moment, even with all of the stuff back in my lab, I don’t think I have the tools or the knowledge to make the tools I’d need to make the tools for a proper examination. I can tell you that I don’t think this shield is coming down anytime soon. The bits and pieces I can see would take far more energy to tear down than went into putting the shield up, and there is far more power in that shield than I thought possible to stick in a stable shield. I’d say it was impossible, but there it sits.”

“So clearly it can be done,” I said, eliciting a nod from Doskan. “Alright people, listen up! Bonheir’s squad, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd platoons, I’m condensing you together into acting 1st platoon. You guys are going with me and 4th platoon through the Courage and Trust rooms. The rest of 5th platoon, you’re going with Doskan to the Puzzle rooms. Good luck, be careful, stay safe. Now form up and move out!”

“Yes, Ma’am!”