IWUAaDNW: Discovery 1.4, Interlude 1.u

The man never dropped his guard, but I saw him narrow his eyes when he encountered the first curve.

“Pitfall ahead,” he said. “Not very deep. Probably not finished.”

This guy was getting every single aspect of my dungeon right, and I was getting annoyed about it. My ants had only managed to dig about seven feet deep. Low enough for a fall to be uncomfortable, but not reliably injurious.

“Cirys, bow. Gwen, watch your step,” he said as he started walking on the wall-hugging ledge that stood over my pit. He was annoyingly adept at that.

It was only when he cleared the corner that he found himself face-to-face with ants.

“Three ants!” he called.

“No shot!” said Cirys, an arrow nocked but without an angle in this curved hallway.

“Can’t get past you,” Gwen reported.

The man cursed under his breath and raised his shield to block my first ant’s bite. While he was doing that, his lower half was exposed, so my second and third ants went in for his forefront leg. They closed around his ankles and squeezed hard.

His skin didn’t even bend. What the fuck was this guy made of?!

—IWUAaDNW: Discovery 1.4



“It’s not,” Ulfric confirmed. He took a deep breath, then repeated, “we should kill it.”

“Ulfric,” Kamella started, but he raised a hand to interrupt her.

“It’s not about the damned politics, either. That thing is an aberration.”

Their breath caught. Their eyes widened.

He told them what he’d seen in there. They remained silent, Kamella in contemplation, Tyr in growing consternation.

“A curving hallway to disable ranged attacks. A pitfall trap with guards at the end of it,” Tyr repeated.

Ulfric nodded. “That thing was weak, but it used what it had perfectly. It even managed to bite me; I’ve gone through dungeons that were a hundred floor deep without getting hit.”

“Were you injured?” Kamella asked in alarm.

Ulfric scoffed. “It tried its best, but it’s still a newborn. If Gwen or Cirys had gone in first, though? They’d have lost limbs.” He shook his head. “That blasted thing is too smart. It’s got one floor, only three rooms, but those hundred floor dungeons I talked about before? Even they weren’t this smart. It’s an aberration. And it’s named, too.”

—IWUAaDNW: Interlude 1.u