Eres awoke with a stabbing pain in his leg and the taste of blood on his lips. His back was pressed up against a pile of rubble, judging by the sharpness and hard angles he felt through the armour, and he could hear the faint dripping of water somewhere in the distance. He expected to see a hole above him, remembering the ground giving way as they fell, but he could just barely make out what looked like a cavern roof in the darkness.

  It took a second for his brain to tick over enough that he started to panic when he didn’t hear anyone else moving. A quick motion and movement of Mana enhanced his eyes to see better in the darkness, and he could see two shapes lying a short distance away from him, beginning to stir. His companions seemed to have landed on a pile of loose earth and mud rather than stone, so he hoped that they weren’t injured. As for himself, as soon as he had been able to see through the gloom of the unlit cave, he knew he wasn’t so lucky.

  As if seeing the injury permitted it to truly turn up the pain, the nerves in his lower leg started to shriek in agony. He reached down and unbuckled the greave on that leg, biting back a hiss of pain as he did so, and then a moan of despair when he saw the state his shin was in. A dark stain was already making its way across the fabric of his trousers, and judging by the lumpy protrusions, his shin bone was snapped in at least two places and pressing up through the flesh.

  Fuck, Eres thought, letting his head drop back with a groan. It’s fine, don’t panic. Freya can probably manage the worst of it once she comes round. Just try not to pass out before then. Come on, Eres, can’t be worse than being stabbed in the gut, can it? Focus up asshole.

  He wasn’t sure how long he had been talking to himself before he heard footsteps approach him. It could have been seconds or days with how woozy he felt, but when he opened his eyes to see a pair of worried gazes looking down at him, he couldn’t have been happier.

  “Glad to see you two ladies up and at ‘em,” he croaked with a crooked smile, before he nodded down at his ruined leg. “I seem to be indisposed, so I’m afraid we won't be able to have any moonlit dances for a little while.”

  Myla grimaced as she looked at the leg before turning to Freya. “Is he going to be alright? He sounds loopy right now, but you can fix it, right?”

  Freya nodded, hands already clasped as she began her prayer. Eres tried to grin up at Myla, but the taste of blood in his throat was getting worse, and he had to turn his head away from her to spit. “Ew, sorry about that. I’m not loopy though, hon, I’m just trying really fucking hard not to think about my shin being exposed to the open air. You both okay though? No injuries?”

  “We are fine. Can’t see where we fell through, but you managed to land on the only pile of rocks in here,” Myla explained, her hand running through his hair nervously. “Freya gave us a quick pick me up before we came over here, so we probably don’t even have a scratch on us. What the hell happened, Eres? I can’t work it out.”

  “I’m going to go with either the dungeon or the Gods are fucking with us,” Eres sighed, the pain in his leg starting to numb as Freya worked. “Can’t be sure on either account, but considering we fell through a hole and there isn’t one above us, I’m guessing we are in the dungeon, and it is far enough along that it is warping space, not just spitting out Goblins. So either we triggered some trap and got sucked in…”

  “Or the Gods decided we needed to be tested and dropped us in here,” Myla finished, eyebrows raised. “You really think they would take that much interest in you? In us? We are just mortals, after all.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just bad fucking luck, but everytime something like this happens I keep remembering talking to them and… Maybe I’m projecting, who knows,” Eres said, before he had to grit his teeth in pain as Freya placed both her hands on his shin and pushed.

  Eres felt every millimetre of the bone sliding back under the skin, and the sickening click that sounded as the bone slid back into place and began to fuse, guided by the Divinity, wasn’t a sound he would be forgetting in a hurry. The pain didn’t last more than a few seconds before the numbness came back, but Eres was still sweating and out of breath.

  “Sorry, I figured that warning you probably wouldn’t help there,” Freya said, moving up on the opposite side to Myla. “That was a hell of a break. It’s going to be tender for a while as it heals, but it should support your weight.”

  “You okay, love?” Eres asked as he pushed himself into a sitting position. Freya looked a little pale, and her breathing was a little faster than usual. “Draw too much?”

  Freya nodded. “Yeah, running on empty after that one. Didn’t think the healing would take that much out of me, but some of the energy got absorbed elsewhere. I think you were more hurt than you realised and it healed your insides.”

  Eres grimaced and spat out another mouthful of blood, feeling his throat clear up properly now. “Yep, internal bleeding is a bitch. Thanks, Freya.”

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  Eres scanned around the room, eyes still enhanced with Mana to help him see in the pitch darkness. The cave they were in wasn’t large, and it looked to have a few tunnels branching out of it. There were no rock formations, but the sound of dripping water echoed down the passageway furthest from their position. The only points of any interest were small piles of dirt and earth spread out around the room, and the single pile of stone and rock that Eres found himself on.

  He picked up some of the rock to look at, and grimaced. It looked like broken chunks of worked stone, as if a large stone wall had been reduced to rubble and left in a pile.

  “Shit,” Eres breathed, putting the stone back down and climbing to his feet. Both of his companions helped him up, and after a second or two of testing, he was confident his leg wouldn’t buckle under the strain. “Freya, can you travel? I know it makes drawing in Divinity harder, but we really shouldn’t stay here. Too many ways in, we need to find somewhere defensible and work out what the fuck is going on.”

  “I can move, but I need to find somewhere to rest sooner rather than later if you want any Miracles coming out of me,” Freya nodded as she spoke, reaching down and lifting her staff from the floor. “It isn’t as easy to draw in as Mana, I need more time to focus, but once I am settled, it shouldn’t take me long to be back to full strength.”

  Eres nodded before turning to Myla. She looked worried, but her hands didn’t waver as she gripped her weapon. “Myla, lead us off. Let's head away from the water source now. I don’t know if dungeon monsters need to drink water, but let's assume that they do and try to find somewhere nice and quiet to regroup. I’m going to give you both better vision down here, but this is the first time I am casting it on others, so let me know if you have any issues. Darksight.”

  Myla’s eyes flared purple for a second before the Mana settled, and she smiled at Eres. “Much better. Follow me.”

  Their journey through the tunnel was brief. Only a few minutes passed before it opened up into another cavern, this one bare of dirt piles, and without another way in. Eres eased himself against one of the walls, still not fully trusting the leg that had only recently been shattered. Freya sank to her knees and started hurriedly praying while Myla took up a guard position near the tunnel they had just left.

  “Eres, you seemed worried about that rubble earlier,” Myla whispered, trying not to distract their Priest from her prayers. “Have you worked something out?”

  Eres raised an eyebrow at that. She was getting better and better at working out what he was thinking, and it brought the ghost of a smile to his lips. “No, more of a hunch really. The rubble back there wasn’t the kind of stonework you find in the middle of nowhere. I think that this dungeon is a lot bigger and a lot more powerful than we thought from the outside. Rubble like that I would expect from a castle or something, so either this dungeon is playing with reality and just dumping random things around, or it stretches far enough that the rubble came from an actual castle that it has taken over. Not sure which is worse, honestly.”

  “Confirms what you thought then, that this is probably going to be worse than just fighting a few Goblins to get out?” Myla sighed, chewing on her lip in thought. “So, you cooking up a plan in that big noble brain of yours?”

  Eres scoffed. “Ex-noble, and not a good one. All I have is that we need to get out of here and warn the Guild, and then they will send a force to deal with this. For now that means we go up and out. I’d like to believe we can get out without being seen, but somehow I doubt that is on the cards, so we are going to have to fight until we find a way up. No idea how deep we got dropped, but let's hope this dungeon hasn't got more than one level yet and we can just get to the surface and beat feet. Not much of a plan, honestly, and I would love to hear a better one.”

  “I think it’s the best we are going to get,” Freya’s voice came from behind Eres, and he turned to her in surprise. She looked less pale, but her flicking gaze and tapping fingers gave away her anxiety.

  “Was there a problem in gathering Divinity down here?”

  “No, no. Just the opposite, honestly,” Freya explained, letting out a shuddering breath. “My Core is already back to capacity. The whole place is thick with energy. I bet if you concentrate, it will be just as heavy with Mana down here.”

  It didn’t take much more than a mental gesture to confirm her words. As soon as he started trying to feel the Mana in the air around him, he could feel it pressing up against him, almost cloyingly thick.

  “Fuck, okay, new plan. We need to move fast,” Eres spat, sucking as much Mana into his Core as he could.

  “Why?” Myla questioned, already shouldering her pack once more despite her question.

  “More Mana and Divinity means an easier time for us, sure,” Eres explained, forming his usual Mana construct gauntlets with a simple thought. “But we aren’t the only things that need it. Monsters feed on it. With this much in the air, either there are even more of the little buggers than we feared, or there are things down here much bigger than the green-skins. We need to get out of here before anything notices us, or fight fast enough that they can’t catch up.”

  They set off at a trot, heading back through the short tunnel to the room they had woken up in. Dodging around the piles of earth and stone, they hurried into one of the tunnels, the one that they had avoided last time because of the sound of dripping water. As they came to the end of the tunnel, they slowed their pace, just peeping their heads out to see what awaited them.

  “They have to be fucking with me,” Eres whispered, his voice harsh as he looked up towards the ceiling. “I refuse to believe this is anything other than a fucking divine prank.”

  In the cavern in front of them, surrounding a small lake, stood three large, grey-skinned figures, at least eight feet in height. The shadowy figures of Goblins darted around at their feet, but the huge figures slowly lumbered about, seemingly aimlessly.

  “Trolls,” Myla confirmed, face scrunched up in anger and fear. “Fucking Cave Trolls.”