She was the problem. She had always been the problem! Of course this had turned out poorly, when she had been told by Edain that it would. No time to wish things weren’t falling out of alignment right before her eyes. She needed to get out of here.
There was a cable hanging from a metal box affixed to the ceiling near her, but it only went up to a small space between what had been the ceiling, and the dirt that had crushed the roof of this structure centuries ago. If she climbed it, she would have no chance to outrun them, but with her short legs that chance was slim as it was. If she got to the top and the dirt blocked off the small space above the ceiling, she would be trapped while they gathered below her.
She was getting tired of running as it was, so she decided to grab the cable. Pulling herself up by her arms was hard, but she managed to get to to a level where the things below couldn’t reach her. That certainly didn’t stop them, and some even grasped at the cable, shaking her lifeline and nearly causing her to topple into the horde. If she fell now, her body would be torn apart, and they would tear into her flesh with their teeth until they gorged themselves. She would not be zombie food today, she had already decided before seeing if her escape plan had a valid escape route.
Her position was looking grim for sure. Her party had certainly been killed. She could see one of them had even turned, now joining the onslaught of creatures swiping at the air in hopes of reaching her. She pulled herself over the lip of the ceiling and found herself in an area that seemed tighter than she had originally anticipated. But there were options here. She could go out over the walls of the room below, it seemed. She began crawling for the nearest adjacent room. The ceiling below her was unstable and making strained sounds as if it would collapse any moment beneath her weight.
She found the top of one of the walls and put more weight on it while she adjusted, preparing to continue her crawl. Then before she could think “Oh shit!” she was tumbling downwards. Her weight on the ceiling had been too much for the flimsy, ancient tiles to handle for more than a second. They crumbled and she fell. There was no grace in her flailing arms, as she had no warning. Her hands met the floor only second before her head, and the darkness of the room that surrounded her rushed into her very mind. She was out cold.
The trip had started like any other. The goal was simple. Dive into a crypt or dungeon, fight the undead, return with loot. It had been a cycle that repeated with a normalcy that was by design. They were meant to fight the undead AND return with loot. That was always the plan. ‘Stick to the plan. Stick to the plan.’ The repetition of her mantra sang loudly in Kizry’s head. But she always managed to fuck things up. It was almost a super power of hers. She had an unnatural ability to bring bad luck to any situation. She thought she had outgrown it when she had reached her teens when she first invested her time in adventuring. She had learned ways to counter the bad luck, but in all honesty she knew deep down that she would always be unlucky.
She had figured the best way to keep the people she loved safe was to travel in a party she didn’t care about… The problem was she was too damned loving, and everyone eventually found their way into her heart when she spent more than a few days with them. This group was no different. Kizry’s current party was searching for a magical artifact that was said to be hidden in a dungeon around this area.
“Kat, do you know where we’re supposed to be going?” The dwarf asked the elf, their deep voice seemed as solid as their large axe. Kizry honestly couldn’t tell if the dwarf was a man or a woman. Dwarves have long facial hair and deep voices regardless of their sex and gender, so looks were never enough to tell them apart on a quick glance. It seemed that the elf had no similar thoughts coursing through her head.
Kat simply replied. “I only know we’re supposed to be going to the base of the mountain. They didn’t specify how close to the base, or if there was something else we were supposed to look for.” The beautiful ranger had Elemental magic and she was using it to track the location by feeling any air that was coming up from the ground or being sucked down into it. Open doorways or holes in a dungeon’s roof should breath slightly enough that the wind would alert her to the location, with enough concentration.
Bryn was clearly not helping with that concentration. Their axe was out of the sheath on their back and was being twirled around one of their hands like a scholar might do with a pencil. The wind it generated with each swirl caused the elf’s frown to deepen. Kat was too gorgeous to frown like that, Kizry though. She tapped the shoulder of the larger dwarf and the axe immediately stopped it’s rotation, but swung dangerously close to her throat. “What?” was the only word that passed between them for a moment. Bryn’s eyes looking dangerously willing to press the axe further.
“I could feel the wind coming off your axe is all. I’m sure it would help Kat to keep the air as still as possible while she searches.” Another moment passed in silence. Then came the hearty chuckle from beneath the beard.
“YOU GOT SOME NERVES, HALFLING!” Bryn shouted more to the air, than Kizry’s face. “You’re right of course. Sorry Kat.” Bryn lowed the weapon and continued walking forward with Kat who ignored the whole conversation. Kizry replied with a firm smile and a chuckle that was almost realistic enough to make Bryn think they hadn’t scared her. Though the look on Syndic’s face and the hand at his knife let her know she wasn’t the only one frightened by the exchange.
Kat had told the group the plan when they started the journey, but they all knew it didn’t tell her which dungeon was most likely to be hiding the treasure they were seeking. Instead, it would tell them there was A dungeon. It could be any of them. And this area had been known to have a few. With Kizry’s luck on their side, they would search 5 or more before they found the right one. But the tracker seemed to have luck of her own. She pointed towards a copse of trees and presented a wavering smile. “I think that’s the spot.”
The trees hid a grove of beautiful green grass and a rainbow of beautiful flowers in bloom. All this, surrounding a small archway leading into the stone of the cliff that stretched up the mountain. There was a simple wooden sign that looked impeccably maintained. As they approached, the orc Life caster, Syndic read it aloud. “You who value life and limb, stay at arm’s length. For those who value time and hope, know you’ll lose more than you gain.”
“Well, what the fuck does that mean?” Kat said. Her voice starting to take on a tinge of worry. We all knew she wasn’t afraid of the message. She was afraid of what lay beyond the sign. She hated being underground. Whenever someone asked her why, she said the same thing. “The air is stale, the water is tainted, the stone is unnaturally dense, and the fire has no fuel but us!” to an elemental caster, this was probably the worst place to be.
Kizry knew it too, but she also knew this relic was worth the risk. The rewards that had already been offered to the party were more grand than any of them had seen in their lives. Despite the party being mostly complete without Kizry’s magic, she did happen to have something the rest of the party didn’t. It was her small stature. Her Augmentation magic was great, but it was her ability to squeeze into a tight space that really got her out of most of her binds.
She was a halfling after all. They were known for two things; Being small, and their luck. When asked, she credited all the deaths that happened around her to being the luckiest of the party. She had always survived up to this point! She must have luck on her side, right?! She knew it wasn’t true, but when it came to the level of wealth that was on the table, what was a few more dead adventurers? She certainly wasn’t going to harm them herself. It would be the cruelty of the world around them that would have the satisfaction. She would just be present for their demise, as was the way things had always gone.
“We need to get this artifact and get back to town. Best way to do that, is to split up to search.” the dwarf said to the group. “I call the ballsy one!” grabbing Kizry by the hip and pulling her in closer than she liked. The move felt a bit more than friendly, especially after recent events. Syndic went with Kat who felt slightly more calm to have the healer with her, not to mention his large stature and protective aura. He was quite handsome too, from Kizry’s perspective. Bryn dragged Kizry into the mouth of the cave without a second thought. “Onwards! When we return, we’ll be rich beyond our wildest-“
Dead. Dead everywhere. And she was the cause.
Kizry woke from the floor to realize she was still alive, but her head was bleeding slowly, and she was surrounded by runes. A headache and dizziness dulled her senses, but she could make out most of the room despite the pain. Magic was etched into the very walls here. There was not the normal walls of a dungeon, but instead it was a cavern of sorts. The ceiling tile where she had fallen from was clearly one of the last parts of the ceiling still in tact. The rest was dirt and stone surrounding her. There was no doorway out. There was no way to climb up the stone walls. As her wooziness wore off, Kiz realized she was probably trapped here. Just her luck.
It took her several minutes to regain full function of her brain. She sat with her face in her hands while she recovered, thinking about the undead face in the horde behind the wall she now sat beside. “Bryn. I finally felt like you’d accepted me. I’m sorry. This is my fault.” She cried now, her tears cascading down her clenched fists and off her elbows into the legs she now pulled into her chest. “I hate this. I’m such a failure. I hurt everyone around me, just by being here.”
“But you did have hope that your party would survive, did you not? You believed in a change of luck?” The voice was distant, unfamiliar, and echoed through the room with a light airiness that scared Kizry’s face from her hands. Looking around, she saw nothing but the runes. Though, the runes began to move… “You deserve a turn of luck, I think. In fact, I think you deserve a way to turn luck to your side on a whim.” The voice echoed out once more.
“Who are you? What are you talking about?” Kizry pleaded with the voice.
“You don’t recognize me still? I’ll give you my name someday, my child. For now, think of me as ‘The Calamitous Turn.’” the voice said with an air of kindness and excitement.
“That doesn’t sound very reassuring…” Kizry replied more to herself than the voice. The corner of her eye noticed a shine that hadn’t been there a moment ago. She turned to look and a tiny hourglass lay at her feet. The edges of the hourglass were protected in a black wood like ebony. The wood secured the glass in the middle on a rotating hinge which was connected to a set of lizards, one facing up, the other facing down. lizards wrapped their arms together around the time piece and held it securely in what could be considered a cage of small metallic arms. She reached for the piece, and the chain of a necklace came into view as she lifted it from the floor.
“This would make for a better earring than a necklace, I think… Maybe I’ll-” She started to plan for the changes, but instantly the chain disappeared and instead was a small metal pin and clasp poking from between one of the lizards heads and the other’s tail. It fit perfectly on her lobe, feeling hardly bigger than the dangle she had on before. Though, this one only dangled as far as the hourglass dripped. It was small enough, it hardly even felt out of place on her. She stood and began to look around for another way out, when she noticed a door on the stone wall to her right. That door had not been there before, as far as she could tell… She stepped towards it, a hand on her new earring, still intrigued by the design, though unable to focus on it with the dungeon still around her.
“Thanks for the bling, mama calamity.” she said, pushing the door open slowly. A soft laugh echoed through the room one last time as she looked into the hallway that now stretched before her. Her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, and she had to decide which way to go. Right, or left. She began making her way right. It would, in theory go past the undead creatures and back to the entrance, if she was getting her directions right. She didn’t see a pathway back to the room she had climbed out of, so she figured they might be too focused on where she had managed to escape them, to realize she was sneaking around behind them. It took her about 20 seconds to get almost down the hall, before the face she last wanted to see turned the corner. Bryn, the undead dwarf was facing her down from hardly 10 feet down the hallway.
A LOUD scream emanated from the walking corpse, and the rest of the group of undead began hauling themselves down the hallway. They turned the corner like flood water, rippling as arms grasped and bodies trampled one another on their path to her. Her hand squeezed the earring out of fright, and she was back at the doorway. “Left or right?” The room behind her whispered softly before that same laugh from before echoed softly into nothingness.
She turned left and hauled ass down the hallway. About 20 seconds after her feet began pounding the stone floors, She heard the same loud scream, but it was much farther away this time. Much less problematic when the horde became a flowing river, ready to chase her downstream. She made it to a door to some stairs leading up. Slamming it shut, and panting as she calmed herself, she heard a more familiar voice. “Hey, I heard a scream. Is that you guys? Is everything okay?” Syndic asked over the railing of the stairs above her.
Her eyes became teary and clouded and she began to charge up the stairs, two at a time. “We have to get out of here!” She grabbed his hand and Kat’s hand after that, pulling them forward through another door and into a room that had been cleared by the party on their way through the crypts.
“Where is Bryn?” Kat asked wearily. Syndic began healing Kizry’s head where she had fallen and simply waited for her to speak, as Kat repeated her question louder. “WHERE is BRYN?!” the elf had never seemed to care for the dwarf before now, but as her panic became more evident, tears were the only thing to escape Kizry’s lips. “WHERE?!” Kat shouted again, lunging for the broken halfling.
Syndic stopped her, grabbing her fist and pulling her into a hug. “We all knew this would be dangerous, okay? We all expected some pain. You can’t say they weren’t charging in with reckless abandon. It was bound to bite them in the ass at some point.”
“Don’t you talk about them like that!” Kat was bawling now. Her fists were pounding the orc in the back over his shoulders. “Don’t you give up on them! They’re okay! We just have to find them!”
“Th-they’re leading the horde that chased me here.” Kizry spoke up, between sobs. “I saw them get bit. They told me to run while they fended them off. Th-The horde is half the size as it was before, but… They’re one of them.” Between Kizry and Kat, Syndic was the only one who managed to keep his face dry. At Kizry’s story, Kat had squeezed Syndic with tight fists, and then collapsed into his arms. The sound of the wails of loss hit Kizry tighter than she had anticipated.
‘It’s all my fault.’ she thought. ‘It’s my fault they’re dead.’
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