March 28, 2026 — 1:36 am

“There will probably be lots of birds,” said Alfric. “A surprising number, really. Something like eighty percent of all recorded monsters had some kind of bird-like appearance, even if they weren’t strictly feathered or flying. Interior will be something like ninety percent natural, maybe more, or that’s the expectation from the logs I read. We’re expecting fewer and more naturalistic entads, and more ectad materials. But again, that’s general.”

“Be ready for anything!” Mizuki chirped. She looked at Alfric. “Right?”

“Right,” he said. He looked at Isra. “If we have fliers, you’re our best defense.” He turned to Mizuki. “And you’re potentially our second-best defense, depending on what kind of magic is in there.”

“Okay,” said Mizuki, though she looked doubtful. The variability of the dungeons was getting to her, Alfric knew. It was something they’d talked about a few times. It was entirely possible for them to go into a dungeon and have Mizuki unable to provide much of anything unless their other casters were using their abilities — and that was often too late, since Hannah didn’t do much healing in the middle of combat.

Alfric approached the dungeon portal with due reverence. It was locked, and he had the key, but it was the same key, the kind that opened only those dungeons in relatively unpopulated areas, where magic tended to be thin. He was itching to try a harder dungeon with the group, maybe Liberfell or Tarchwood, but with things as they were, he didn’t want to push anyone. Latchet Point was, in fact, supposed to be one of the easier dungeons in the entire area, and he’d selected it because he wanted something that wouldn’t need the absolute pinnacle of teamwork.

Alfric went first, bident held in front of him. He had wanted a better spear from Dondrian, but had set budgetary rules for himself, and the spear he’d been admiring would have required him to take out a loan. Still, the armor itself could serve as a weapon, if the conditions were right.

Once he was through the transitory zone, Alfric was greeted by warm and pleasant sunlight, or something like it, which filtered down through tall trees all around him. He waited, not moving more than five feet from the entrance, and kept his eyes peeled for creatures. The open room was large, reminding him of the dungeon they’d done with the tall pillars, that time he’d been turned into stone, and he idly wondered whether the others would think the same. There didn’t seem to be any monsters though, and it wasn’t long before the others had entered the dungeon too.

<This is like that dungeon where you got turned into stone,> said Mizuki as she looked around.

<Yeah, I was thinking that,> said Alfric. He reached into the trunk and pulled out some colored lights, which he put on either side of the dungeon entrance, so they’d be able to find it when they wanted to leave. The edge of the room was a vertical span of wood, which slightly curved, and terminated at a thicket of branches above, roughly the same height as the canopy.

<Lots of wood mood,> said Mizuki. <Not the best, not without mixing in some force. Verity, if you can, a song for strength would be great, like we’ve done before? Something to give me some force to work with.>

In response, Verity strummed her lute with her many-fingered hand, starting in on a light and pleasant song about petals falling in late spring. Alfric had been worried that her songs would be of a mood, but it was a lifting tune, one of hope.

Alfric nodded. <Let’s move on ahead and scout the room.>

These large rooms were trouble, mostly because the threats could come from anywhere. This one was a forest, so much like the one they’d left that once they were a ways into it, it was almost as though they weren’t in a dungeon at all. The ground cover was sparse, just short grasses and small ferns among the decaying plant matter, which made it easier to move through. Alfric marked trees with chalk as they walked, though the sun was at enough of an angle that he wasn’t too worried about finding his way back. Even in a dungeon with something like a sun, there was rarely a day-night cycle. He was keeping his eye on the sun though, just in case.

The shriek of the birds could be heard before the flapping of their wings. The tall trees made it hard to pinpoint their direction, but Alfric had heard them coming, and was facing the right direction for them. Isra had lifted her bow and nocked an arrow, ready to fire. From the sounds, it was a cluster of less than ten rather than a flock, something large and threatening, and Alfric hoped that it wouldn’t be another dive-bombing situation again.

The first of the birds swooped in with talons outstretched, moving so fast that Alfric didn’t have much time to take it in. The plumage was colorful, yellow at the leading edge and blue toward the back, with a black beak and feet that were difficult to see. The size was hard to judge until it was close, and then when it was close, he realized that it was bigger than he was. Isra got it with an arrow, but it raked its talons across Alfric’s helm and knocked him to the ground. He got to his feet at once and turned around to track it, but it had been pierced through the skull and tumbled to the ground in a burst of feathers. By the time Alfric turned around, the rest of them were coming, their shrieks almost deafening, following one after the other in a bone-shaking harmony.

Alfric was in front of the others, guarding them as best he could, and raised his bident into the air, trying to catch one of the birds as they tried to slash him with their talons as they passed. He got one, briefly, and the force of its movement wrenched the bident from his hands, leaving him momentarily unarmed. One of the birds landed in front of him and began pecking at him with its oversized beak, and it was like being smacked in the chest with a sledgehammer, heavy bruising blows that his armor couldn’t fully dissipate.

Alfric moved forward rather than back, only a moment’s thought spared for his team, who were on their own. He shifted the plates of his armor, losing protection around his arms to form the plates into pointed weapons. They were dull, but with enough force, a dull weapon would be good enough. He slammed his plate-covered fists together against the side of the bird’s head, edge on, using the full weight of his muscles, and the sloppy attack caught the bird in one eye. It wasn’t enough to break the skull, but Alfric had the bird’s head held, and used the plates like a vise, their force adding to his. The bird kicked him, using its sharp talons against the heavy metal on his stomach, almost hard enough to take the wind out of him. He held tight to the bird’s head and pressed with all his might, begging the armor for more power, until finally the skull creaked and groaned, then gave way. The bird collapsed to the ground, and Alfric spun around to look at his team.

Blood was seeping from between the gaps in Hannah’s armor, and the thimble armor that Isra wore had gashes ripped through it. Alfric hadn’t been able to count the birds as they came in, but at least three were still standing. Verity was the only one not actively fighting one, but she was on the ground, strumming the lute with hair pasted to her face by blood and sweat. Alfric raced for Mizuki, who he was most worried about — she had little combat experience — but before he got there, the bird tried to kick her in the chest. She caught the foot in the open mouth of the skull on her armor, and chomped down hard, shearing the leg off at the backwards knee. The bird hopped back, bleeding, then lost its balance and collapsed, beating its wings against the ground. Mizuki was on it in a moment, skulls opened wide.

Alfric tackled one of the birds from the side, taking it off Isra. He rolled with the bird, wrapping his armor around it and trying to squeeze hard and pin it in place. As he did that, he found his strength doubled, Verity’s work, and the flesh of the bird gave way to the dull edges of the plate armor. The bird wriggled beneath him, threatening to break free, bucking and twisting, but just as Alfric thought he might not be able to hold it pinned, the bident came down from above, piercing through the bird’s head, which then popped with a muffled explosion. It was Isra who’d used the bident, and she helped Alfric to his feet.

He turned to where Hannah had been, and was just in time to see her land a solid blow against the last of the birds. It was slow to rise, and Mizuki blasted a hole through its torso before it could find its footing.

For a brief second there was silence save for Verity’s song, which she’d kept up through being knocked to the ground and the frantic bout of combat, and then Alfric remembered his training.

<Status on injuries,> he said. <Hannah —>

<Ay,> she said. <Triage.> She held out a hand to Mizuki, who shook her head, then to Isra, who gratefully took it.

Alfric himself felt unsteady on his feet, and his chest ached. He thought it very possible that he’d broken a few ribs, which wasn’t too big of a deal, and worried more that he had some kind of internal injury that was beyond Hannah’s ability to fix.

It took some time for them to get as patched up as they could be, and no one really seemed to feel like talking. The enormous birds had been a difficult and frantic fight that they very easily might not have made it out of, and there was no loot to show for it. As a start to the dungeon, it was inauspicious. Mizuki should have been happier that her skull armor had actually worked in its first real combat test, but she seemed a bit dazed.

<Let’s get going,> said Alfric. This was probably the part of a dungeon where he should have given a pep talk, but none of his prepared pep talks seemed like they fit, not so close to the start of the dungeon.

They trudged on through the woods, and Alfric left more chalk marks on the trees. He was on higher guard. The first fight of a dungeon was often the most dangerous by virtue of it being the one that happened before your head was really out of the real world and back into delving, and he hoped that everything after would go better. He hadn’t seen enough of how everyone had reacted to know whether mistakes had been made on their end, and now wasn’t the time to ask.

They saw the gap in the woods before they saw the chasm. It was at least a hundred feet across, a sheer drop, and they couldn’t see the bottom, which was saying something, given there was full sunlight. They could see, on the opposite side, the way that soil transitioned into clay and later rock. It was unstable, too. Bits kept falling off into the place where the light didn’t reach.

<Whoa,> said Mizuki. She went closer to the edge than she should have and leaned over to look down. <Ugh.> She stepped back.

<There’s more of this room to explore,> said Alfric. <We’ll go other directions before we attempt a crossing.> Mizuki had the helm of flight, owing mostly to the skull armor lacking a helm, but it would be a process to get them over, and make retreat much more difficult.

<A huge rift,> said Hannah, staring at the gap between the sides.

They hadn’t yet moved on when they heard a bellow from across the way. It was large, slug-like, dripping mucous and pounding its pseudopods against the ground, but it seemed as incapable of crossing the gap as they were.

<We’ll deal with you later, pal,> said Mizuki.

Isra was the first to hear the other sounds. It was a full flock of birds this time, a swarm in the sky, racing through the woods, from the direction of the bellowing slug, possibly called by it. A cascade of monsters wasn’t unheard of. Once Isra called out the flock, they got into a more defensible formation, with Verity toward the back, and Alfric braced himself. A large flock of small creatures wasn’t something they were really prepared for, not with Mizuki being lacking in offensive capabilities this time around. There was a part of Alfric that wanted to call for a retreat, but it seemed likely the birds were faster than them. They could get in the chest and have someone race to the exit with the helm, but that would take more time, and as these thoughts were running through Alfric’s head, the birds appeared.

They were black, with long tails, and there were hundreds of them. The only reason not to panic was that they were small, but Alfric knew from experience that tiny creatures could be a problem.

<Verity, to me!> he called.

Verity moved in close as Alfric opened the plates up around him. He was just barely able to fit her in with him, the plates covering them both. The plates were no longer overlapping around his body and instead interlocking around them both. It effectively removed both of them from the fight, but Verity was the only one of them who wasn’t in full plate or its equivalent, and the small beaks would have torn her to shreds and taken her out of the battle anyway. She was still singing her song, though she was pressed against him and unable to play the lute.

The rain of birds started with a solid plink against the armor, moving it only slightly, the sound echoing for a bit before Alfric held out his hand and called for the plates to still. The second came soon after the first, and then they were beating against the armor like heavy rain. Alfric hoped that they were dying in the process, but it was impossible to tell, not without leaving a gap in the plates. Alfric tried to treat it as a storm to be weathered, but he was worried about how everyone else was doing out there. His own contribution against a flock was largely insignificant, and he tried to fight down the urge to go out there.

The sound of birds slamming against the armor began to die down, and there were other sounds that followed, some of them a plinking as birds tried to get into the shell, a few sharp blasts that Alfric thought was probably Mizuki cobbling together some spells, and the clamor of people moving around in a disordered way.

“I need to help,” Alfric said to Verity, partly by way of apology. Before she could respond, he stepped out from the armor, leaving through a brief parting of the plates, as easily as stepping through curtains hanging in a doorway.

He was beset at once by small birds, each no larger than a handspan, and they were weak, tiny things, though still capable of nipping a pea-sized bit of flesh from a person, as they proved to him almost right away. He slapped at them as though they were flies, and found that their bones were thin enough that they died in a single hit, which gave him the resolve to continue on. He was being bitten, but they were more concerned with biting him than avoiding his wrath, and Alfric smashed them over and over as his wounds wept blood.

The flock thinned over time, and every dead bird meant that there was less damage taken in killing the next one. Still, there was a limit to how much a person could bleed and still be well, and Alfric knew that he was nearing that point. The others were doing their part, though Hannah’s armor seemed to make her impervious, and Mizuki had taken to the skies, zipping in and out of the trees as the tiny birds followed her, occasionally releasing a sharp blast of magic behind her. She stopped all at once and covered her face with her hand, letting the birds run into her, chomping down on them with the skulls where they tried to beat against her.

Alfric hadn’t been watching Isra when she fell, he only saw her standing one moment and then on the ground the next. The thimble armor was too weak to protect her, the beaks of the birds sharp enough to rend it. He rushed over to her, trying to shoo the birds away, but they were dungeon mad, and focused only on the killing. He didn’t know how long she’d been down, but the thimble armor had been ripped, and her face was uncovered, now with wounds all over it from the pecks of dozens of birds.

<Healing!> Alfric called, and Hannah was over in a moment, even as the birds were still trying to kill both of them.

Hannah swore when she laid hands on Isra, and Alfric turned his attention away, back toward the birds. With another sharp crack, the last of the birds following Mizuki died, and she immediately landed and began bashing more of the birds, smashing some off Hannah. There were only a few of them left, and between the two of them —

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<Verity, healing!> Hannah called.

Alfric looked to where Isra was laying. There were too many holes in her face, a grotesque pocking of flesh. He felt his stomach lurch.

<Is she going to be okay?> asked Mizuki.

Verity was playing a progressive, the same she’d used on Isra before, a bard’s version of a healing miracle. Nothing seemed to be happening though. The wounds weren’t sealing. The blood, in fact, had stopped flowing from the wounds. The thimble armor had started to retract, seemingly of its own volition.

Hannah sank back and let out a breath. <She didn’t make it.>

Verity burst forward from the plate armor, tossing her lute to the side, the song ended before it could reach its conclusion. She shrieked when she saw Isra laying there, then rushed to the body and cradled it, as though a hug could somehow bring Isra back to life.

Alfric felt a cold chill in the pit of his stomach.

<Alright,> said Alfric. <It’s alright. She’s not really dead.> He let out a shaky breath. <I’ll reset the day, she’ll be fine.>

Verity was crying, and Mizuki was too.

<Do it now,> said Verity. <End it now!>

<That’s not protocol,> said Alfric. <You wait until late in the day, in case there are things that you need to change. I can still go to Filera and get items identified —>

<That’s not something that anyone wants to hear,> said Hannah.

<I know,> said Alfric. <But you’re all going to forget this, and I’m not, so when I get up this morning and come downstairs, I want to have had some time to process this and what it means. I want there to be hours between when it happened and when I have to report on it. Okay?>

<I’m gonna be sick,> said Mizuki, and she promptly threw up. The skulls on her armor opened wide and threw up too, disgorging all of the things she’d used them to eat, including a corner of a drawer from her room, the leg of a large bird, and the corpses of all the small birds the armor had managed to bite.

<We’ll go,> said Alfric after a moment to stare at the mess. <Back to Pucklechurch. I’ll reset around nightfall.>

<Kill me,> said Verity. Her face was set.

<Verity,> Alfric began.

<It’s all pointless now, I don’t want to be a part of this, I don’t want to feel like this,> said Verity. <I love her. I don’t want to know she’s dead, even if she’s not. You’re resetting. I’m not going to remember it.>

<Protocol,> Alfric began.

Verity rose to her feet, letting Isra’s head rest against the ground. By the time Alfric realized what she was going to do, she was already in motion. He was faster than her, but he’d been too slow to react, and the cliff was too close to them. She disappeared over the edge before he could catch up, and it was quite some effort to stop himself. She screamed, into the open air rather than the party channel, and then there was silence, not even so much as a thump.

Alfric screamed down the pit, outside the party channel, the first thing that the dungeon would have heard from him aside from the fighting. Verity was gone, as dead as Isra, which meant not really dead at all, because the day would be erased. Still, it hit in his gut. He’d have to disclose it. He’d have to think about it, and find the right words, and maybe give a lecture on why no one should ever do that, even if they were confident the day would be reset, and it was nothing that he’d want to do.

<She’s never dealt with anythin’ like this,> said Hannah.

<I haven’t either,> said Alfric. He slumped. <This is our first failure as a dungeoneering party.>

<How could she just do that?> asked Mizuki. She was looking at the cliff. She looked at Alfric. <Has she done that before?>

<No,> said Alfric. <I’d have disclosed it.>

<To us too?> asked Mizuki.