The crooked sign stood at the very bottom of the mountain forest's edge; its wood was weathered and splintered.
STAY OUT. ONLY DEATH INSIDE.The words were carved deep, crude but clear, and someone had painted them in what looked disturbingly like dried blood. Yet, the first wave of soldiers ran past it without slowing down at all, their boots trampling the warning into the mud. One man's shoulder had caught the post, and the entire sign toppled sideways into the dirt.
Lord Parsmuth watched from astride his mount, his armour polished to a mirror shine despite the long march. He was a minor noble, yes, but ambitious for more than that. A dragon's hoard would change everything and the fame from slaying it would make him as powerful as a king.
Recognition. Wealth. Power. All he had to do was kill one overgrown lizard. How bad could it be? After all, if all of them were extinct, that means they’re very killable.
"Forward!" he commanded. "The beast cowers in its den!"
The army surged through the forest.
The trees of the forest were wrong.
A captain noticed it first. The trunks were too thick and too close together, their branches interlocking overhead in patterns that seemed almost deliberate. It’s like they had woven themselves together to create only a single path through the forest. The underbrush grabbed at boots and armour, thorns catching on leather and cloth. What should have been a clear way up the mountain had become a tangled mess.
"Keep formation!" he shouted, hacking at a vine that had wrapped around a soldier's leg. "Don't spread out!"
It was very strange. No man could define it, but they all had the feeling that the forest itself seemed to be changing and moving in real time, as if to stop them.
Natural clearings closed off behind them. Roots rose from the ground to trip the unwary. Twice, scouts reported paths that led nowhere, circling back on themselves in impossible loops.
And then after that, the mountain itself seemed hostile too. Slopes that had looked manageable from below revealed themselves as near-vertical climbs upon approach. Firm rock almost seemed to turn into loose stones that shifted underfoot, sending men tumbling backward. The obsidian gateway at the peak of the mountain was visible from kilometres away, gleaming black and ominous at the peak, but reaching it took hours longer than it should have.
Men began to mutter about curses. About dark magic.
Parsmuth silenced them with a glare and drove them onwards.
They reached the obsidian gate as the sun climbed toward noon.
The gateway was more impressive up close. Jagged black fangs rose in elegant arches, polished to a mirror shine that reflected the army back at itself as grim distortions. The glass doors were sealed tight, smooth and seamless, with no visible handles or hinges.
"Bring the ram," Parsmuth ordered.
Twenty men hauled the massive log forward, its head capped in iron and shaped like a fist. They positioned it before the gate, stepped back, then charged.
The first impact rang like a bell. The doors didn't budge.
The second strike created a hairline crack.
The third shattered the ram's iron cap and sent splinters flying, but the doors finally gave way, swinging inward with a sound like grinding bones. It was almost too easy to open, considering the size and thickness of the fortifications.
A noxious gas poured out.
It rolled down the mountain in a thick yellow-green cloud, heavier than air, clinging to the ground. Men screamed as it reached them, clutching their throats, their eyes streaming. The front ranks stumbled backward, gagging and collapsing.
Then, from deep within the darkness of the cave, came a spark.
A single point of flame, small and bright.
The gas ignited.
The explosion tore through the gateway in a roaring wave of fire and force. The obsidian doors blasted outward, one of them torn completely free and tumbling down the mountainside, crushing soldiers beneath its weight. Flames rolled over the front ranks, incinerating men where they stood. The shockwave threw bodies into the air like rag dolls.
The dragon's gate itself had roared fire.
Parsmuth's mount reared and bolted. He barely kept his seat, sawing at the reins, his face pale beneath his helmet. Around him, men were screaming and burning.
"Reform!" he bellowed. "REFORM THE LINES!"
It took many long minutes to restore order. The survivors clustered together, shields raised, staring at the smoking gateway with wide eyes.
"Shield bearers forward!" Parsmuth commanded. "Knights, with me! We're going in!"
The central chamber was very quiet.
A knight-captain led the advance, his shield raised, his sword drawn. Ten men of lesser rank followed him through the shattered gateway, stepping over debris and scorch marks. The interior was larger than it should have been, the ceiling lost in darkness above, the walls carved smooth.
And everywhere, scattered across the floor, were bones.
They were strange bones. There were skulls and ribcages. Long bones and small ones. Some were human-sized; others were massive and misshapen. They crunched underfoot as the men progressed inside.
"What in the hells -?" one knight started.
An arrow took him in the throat.
He gurgled and collapsed, blood spraying, and suddenly the air was full of arrows. They came from above, from carved embrasures high in the inner walls of the entryway chamber that none of them had noticed in the darkness. Goblin archers leaned out of the firing positions, loosing shaft after shaft with precision and easy aim at the intruders who were silhouetted against the light of the outside world.
"Shields!" the knight-captain roared, raising his own. Arrows clattered against steel. Men screamed as shafts found gaps in armour, punching through leather and into flesh.
"Get back! Fall back to the entrance!"
But before they could retreat, a figure stepped into the chamber behind them.
The mage wore robes of deep blue, his staff topped with a crystal that glowed with gathering power. He raised one hand, spoke a word that made the air shiver, and hurled a fireball at the nearest embrasure.
The explosion was deafening. Rock shattered, sending debris raining down. The embrasure collapsed, and the goblin inside screamed as he fell.
The mage turned and fired again. And again. Each blast carved chunks from the walls, destroying the defender’s firing positions one by one.
The surviving goblins retreated down their upper tunnels, vanishing into the darkness.
"Press forward!" Parsmuth entered the chamber, stepping over bodies. "We have them cornered!"
The knight captain wanted to point out that they'd lost thirty men just reaching this room, but he bit his tongue and advanced.
One of the soldiers stepped on a pressure plate hidden beneath a skull that he kicked out of the way.
The grinding sound started immediately.
The boulder was massive, as wide as several men standing shoulder to shoulder. It rolled out of a side passage, gathering speed, crushing everything in its path. Soldiers scattered, diving aside, but not all of them were fast enough. The boulder caught five men and carried them along, bones breaking, armour crumpling, until it rolled straight through the shattered gateway and continued down the mountainside.
The grinding sound faded into the distance.
The knight-captain turned toward Lord Parsmuth. “I suggest we make camp here at our won territory and plan a more effective siege. Our losses are too great for something like the young beast we’re allegedly hunting.” He swipes a hand along the floor, pinching some of the fine stone dust between his fingers and looking at a glint in the flakes of material. “This isn’t just a cave. It’s a dungeon. There is magic in the air,” he explains. “We must contact the adventuring guilds, my lord.” He lets the dust fall. “They’re more versed in delving into such places than we are.”
Lord Parsmuth looks at him, knowing that he is right from a logistical standpoint. But he can’t let someone else have a chance of stealing his glory.
"Press on. Gather the men. We're going deeper," he orders.
“...Yes, my lord,” replies the knight-captain.
The corridor ahead was filled with thick, hot steam.
It vented up from somewhere below, reducing visibility to a few feet. The advancing soldiers advanced in a tight cluster, weapons drawn, eyes straining to see through the mist.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Water condensed on the ceiling and fell in fat droplets.
Then one of them screamed.
Everyone turned to see him clawing at his head, where something translucent and wobbling had latched onto his face. A slime. It pulsed and contracted, secreting acid, and the man's screams grew higher as his flesh and eyes began to dissolve.
Someone tried to pull it off. It burnt his hands.
Then the ceiling moved.
Hundreds of slimes, hidden by the steam, dropped down at once, raining onto the clustered soldiers. They landed on heads, shoulders, and arms. Anywhere they touched, they latched onto and burnt. Men flailed and screamed, trying to shake them off, accidentally striking their companions and pushing them into more slimes that were oozing out through the crevices.
Panic exploded through the ranks.
"Fire! Use fire!" the mage shouted, hurling flames at the creatures. The slimes shrivelled and popped, but there were so many.
It took ten minutes to clear the corridor. Fifteen men didn't make it.
The intruders fought through chamber after chamber.
Goblins ambushed them from hidden passages. Traps triggered at what appeared to be random, dropping blades from the ceiling or releasing poison gas into sealed rooms.
But slowly, inevitably, the army advanced.
They had numbers. They had training. They had mages who could blast through obstacles and knights who could hold the line while others advanced.
There were heavy casualties amongst the untrained and unranked. But the knights and the few mages, they held their own well.
The dungeon fought back, but it was losing.
The final chamber was deep in the mountain's heart.
The air was heavy with a dense steam that somehow still managed to rise from a bubbling moat surrounding a central platform. On that platform, piled high in gleaming stacks, was treasure. Gold coins. Silver candlesticks. Weapons and armour and bolts of silk. A fortune that made even the most disciplined soldiers stop and stare, covered in blood and sweat or not.
The last of the goblins retreated into a deeper room beyond the treasure, their eyes glinting in the darkness as they pulled back.
And atop the heap of treasure, sitting with casual confidence, was the beast.
The dragon.
She was smaller than the legends suggested. Barely taller than a man. But her presence filled the chamber anyway, radiating danger and power. Glistening, dark scales covered her body, catching the light from their torches as they dripped with condensation from the moisture in the air. Massive wings were folded against her back, being too large for her frame. A pair of ram’s horns curved from her skull, thick enough to batter through a solid brick wall from the sight of them. Her ruby red eyes glowed with a deeply frightening intelligence that triggered a primal instinct of dread in many a man, and her lips showed far too many sharp teeth that secured fear in the rest of them.
For the bravest, or perhaps the strangest, of them, she was terrifyingly beautiful in a way that made men falter more than even the gold around her had. But somehow still horrifying in a way that made them want to run away nonetheless.
She held a skull in her hands, turning it slowly, examining it.
"A dragon," someone whispered. "It really is a real dragon."
Parsmuth stepped forward, flanked by his two remaining court mages. Their large, wide-brimmed hats were drooping on either side of their frames. He stopped at the edge of the moat, the bubbling water hissing between him and the dragon.
"Beast," he declared, his voice ringing through the chamber. "For your terrorisation of the innocent and your feckless slaughter of these good men, I have come to take your head,” he proclaims loudly, so that his men can hear him. “Surrender, and I promise that I will make your death a quick one."
The dragon sat quietly for a long moment, still studying the skull in its hands.
It wasn’t a human skull, Parsmuth noted. Its shape was… just off in some subtle ways.
"You know," she said finally, her voice conversational, "if this was yesterday, I would have gotten mad. Very. Very mad."
She turned the skull over in her hands.
"Because you came into my home. You touched MY things." Her voice sharpened slightly, still sounding actually a little bit mad about that. "You've killed some of my goblins. My slimes."
She turned her head, and her eyes locked onto Parsmuth's. The intensity of her gaze made several hardened soldiers take an involuntary step backward.
"You're breathing my air," she finished coldly.
Then, most frighteningly of all, she smiled.
"But I'm growing as a person, you see." She extended her hand, holding the skull out toward them. "I learnt a lesson recently." She tilted her head. "Just because you don't have physically something in your hands doesn't mean it isn't still yours. I can own immaterial things too."
She let the skull fall.
It rolled down the treasure pile, clattering over coins and candlesticks, landing at the bottom with a hollow thunk.
Then it began to rattle.
Magic pulsed through the chamber, the same magic that shaped the dungeon walls, and the skull rose. Bones flew toward it from the scattered piles throughout the room, assembling themselves as if by magic.
Ribs. Spine. Limbs. Wings. It all came together, reanimating and forming and moulding into a whole thing by the power of the same magic that had continuously reshaped the forest and the mountain.
A skeletal dragon stood where the skull had landed, its empty sockets burning with cold fire.
And all through the dungeon, the recently unburied dead rose.
[MONSTER][Dragonoid Undead]Skeletal warriors assembled from the scattered remains of dragonkin of many shapes and sizes. Their empty eye sockets burn with cold fire. They attack with mechanical precision and are capable of reassembling themselves from shattered fragments, making them extremely difficult to destroy permanently within dungeon territory. They rise in great numbers from previously buried remains when called upon by their dungeon's animating force.
Rank: C+Screams echoed from the corridors behind the intruders. The bones they'd been walking over, stepping on, and ignoring for hours suddenly reanimated all at once. Skeletal dragonkin of many shapes and sizes pulled themselves together from scattered remains and attacked from behind, from the sides, and from everywhere.
One of the mages turned at the sound. A bony hand shot up from the bubbling moat and grabbed his ankle. He yelped in surprise as he was yanked down into the water, his scream cutting off abruptly as he vanished beneath the surface.
Chaos erupted.
Soldiers turned to face enemies on all sides. The undead swarmed them, biting and clawing, pulling men down. The careful formation collapsed into panicked individuals fighting for their lives.
Parsmuth spun, trying to rally his men, when movement caught his eye.
The dragon was suddenly there, standing directly in front of him.
Her tail whipped out and caught the remaining mage across the chest, sending him flying into the wall with a sickening crunch.
One long, black claw pressed against Parsmuth's throat with sharp, cold intent. Its owner smiled down at him, her face inches from his. "What was it that you said you wanted to take?" she asked him playfully.
He couldn't answer. Couldn't breathe. He could only stare into those glowing eyes and realise, far too late, that he'd made a terrible mistake in coming here.
[QUEST COMPLETE]Objectives Achieved:
• Reach a total hoard wealth of 10000 [Obols] ✓
• Vanquish an army ✓
Reward: [Princess Connection]
Your metamagical aura passively radiates outward from your territory, reaching the hearts and minds of those who should fear you most. The location of all [Princess]-class entities within kingdoms bordering your own territory will now be permanently revealed to you.
Furthermore, you will consistently visit them in their restless dreams, causing them to slowly become obsessed with you.
[NEW QUEST]Objective: You have proven your power and established dominion over the lesser. Now you must prove to the world how serious you really are.
Your next goals:
Collect 4 new unique [Princess]-class brides.
Destroy a castle.
Reach your second transformation stage, evolving into a fully non-hominid dragon type.
Time Limit: You have ninety days to complete these tasks.Failure Penalty: Failure to reach the next stage of your growth will result in evolution stagnation, permanently locking you into your current form at the time of failure, for better or worse. Your princesses will realise for themselves that the concept of you they imagined was better than the reality of you that they have come to know and ultimately decide it isn't worth it.