Let’s Check it Out

To the party of adventurers, what Gorin was proposing was utterly nonsensical. A dungeon in a dungeon wasn’t a thing. Dungeons were, by design, winding, twisting, and bizarre places filled with magic, beasts, and untold varieties of perils and rewards. They came in every shape and size, some elegant and some vile, so anything within a dungeon would reasonably be part of that dungeon.

However, for as wide an array of options as there were, one rule of dungeoneering was irrefutable: Every dungeon had a patron.

Generally speaking, these patrons were gods or other lesser deities. They were created by beings with immense arcane or divine powers who could warp reality to such a degree that they could make the massive, self-contained structures adventurers explored for untold riches. Historically, a few mortals managed to create them, very often beings on the road to godhood themselves, but almost every known dungeon was the product of one divine host or another. Some did it to challenge adventurers, some to try and teach them a lesson, and some just for sheer boredom, but every dungeon had a patron. And every dungeon, whether through some unwritten rule or some rule of the universe, was branded with the mark of that patron, denoting them as the owner and ruler of the dungeon in question.

Green Hills Dungeon, the twisting labyrinth of stone and muck that Roland, Gorin, Trixa, and Ivy now stood in, certainly had a patron. Peris, the goddess of growth and germination, maintained it. She was a kind and loving goddess that many farmers prayed to all year round and whose most devout followers were blessed with bountiful harvests, provided they nurtured their gardens and souls as Peris dictated in her teachings. The group had already paved through the lovelier, greener sections in the floors above, now getting down into the dirt and being rewarded with mushroom men for their efforts. But the foyer they now stood in was anything but Peris’s domain.

Ivy’s bomb had blown the nearest wall to dust, revealing on the other side a wide-open space beyond. Wide-open space was the best term because it was not a cave or another room but a verdant field. Were it not for the adventurers knowing full well that there were at least two hundred feet below ground, they might have thought they’d somehow blown a hole to the outside, but this was unnatural and out of place.

The open field they now occupied stood beneath a darkened, night-time sky filled with stars and galaxies that none recognized. The silvery disc of a full moon floated above, casting a pale, ghostly hue to all they saw. Iridescent grasses and glowing blue and purple flowers dotted the landscape, growing beneath a canopy of strange, unrecognizable trees. One might mistake them for oaks, lest they looked close enough to realize the leaves had too many points and too many ridges, not to mention the wood was softer and more pliable than an oak, or any tree, ought to be. Whispers of animal-like shadows whipped through the grasses and along trees, rustling leaves and foliage as they ran, but giving no hint of their true nature. The landscape seemed to go on forever in all directions, but the adventurers saw that a grand, wooden archway amidst the foliage stood only a few hundred feet ahead, housing a set of massive double doors.

Such oddities of time and space were hardly unheard of in dungeons. Beasts, often nicknamed “bosses,” would regularly be found behind archways or other odd displays of wealth and power and were generally the endpoint for dungeons. But this was nowhere near the Green Hill’s boss room, which lay several floors below them, and the name on the archway was irrefutable.

THE RITES OF DEMI: GODDESS OF FERTILITY AND REBIRTH. HOSTESS OF BEASTS, MONSTERS, AND MAN.

“Who’s Demi?” Ivy asked as the four slowly and cautiously approached the grand archway.

“Not a fuckin’ clue,” Gorin remarked.

“Haven’t heard of them,” Roland agreed.

The closer they got to the archway, the more details they could make out. The archway appeared natural rather than carved or lumbered, as though someone had taken two redwood trees and **** them to bend and grow to a point. The double doors stood amidst the field, blocking the entrance to seemingly nothing, with nothing behind them and leading nowhere. A single hardwood plaque, too small to read, was carved at the base of the archway to one side. A huge, masterfully carved moon relief rested at the top of the archway, etched out of the hardwood, with dozens of carved scenes scattered, each in their own space across the two doors below.

Some scenes featured humans, elves, dwarves, and smallfolk in idyllic, pastoral settings. Others featured average beasts like wolves and bears, resting, eating, or drinking. And still more showed monsters such as minotaurs, mermaids, or harpies lounging, playing, or at peace. All of them were gentle, serene scenes, something exceptionally uncommon regarding typical artwork of monsters, which often were terrifying or brutal. But each had a single, unifying element: every scene showed some part of the art, perhaps a beast, person, or monster, staring up towards the moon at the top of the archway.

“Well, whoever they are, this is beautiful,” Roland considered as he began to step closer to the archway.

“Careful!” Gorin said quickly, reaching out his hand, “It might be trapped.”

“Trapped?” Ivy asked, quirking her brow as she skipped ahead. “Who would trap a door that doesn’t lead anywhere?”

“Oh, I’m sure it leads somewhere.” Gorin shot back. “It just doesn’t lead here.”

Ivy, ignoring the dwarf’s warnings, ran up to the double door to get a better look. She stopped before the wooden carvings and stared at them like she was in an art gallery, admiring each scene individually.

“They’re so pretty,” she remarked happily.

“Spatial magic?” Roland asked, glancing over to Gorin.

“I’d bet my beard on it,” the dwarf agreed. “But where? And why?”

“It’s strange that this place was hidden like this.” Roland considered. “Have you ever heard of a dungeon having an entrance to another dungeon inside?”

“Never.”

Roland glanced over his shoulder at Trixa, who had remained oddly silent since they’d entered the enchanted space. Her brow furrowed, and her eyes appeared to be scouring the archway and adjoining double doors for something. They moved from its top to bottom, then back to the top once more to repeat, rereading the message carved along the arch and mouthing the name “Demi.” Roland looked at Gorin, who joined him in staring at Trixa’s oddly focused behavior before saying something.

“Trix?” he asked, “You okay?”

“Huh? What?” she stammered as if snapping out of a stupor.

“Ye alright, lass?” Gorin chimed in, beginning to eye their luminous surroundings warily.

“Uh, yeah,” Trixa said with a nod. She held one arm tight to her body, rubbing her shoulder with the other. “Just a little surprised, is all.”

“You know who this Demi is?”

“I- I think so.” She confirmed with a nod.

Gorin and Roland traded looks again before once again scanning their surroundings. There didn’t seem to be any monsters or creatures coming out of the woodwork. No traps going off or anything else dangerous. A wizard wasn’t hiding in the shadows of the weirdly rubber-like trees, and no fairies were popping out of the glowing purple flowers. They could only presume Trixa’s behavior was something else.

“Spill it, girl.” Gorin huffed.

“Gorin,” Roland chastised him for his harsh words. “Trixa, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing- Nothing’s wrong. I just…” her words trailed off as she stared at the archway again. She took another minute before finding her words. “Little surprised, is all.”

“Okay…” Roland responded in a measured tone. “So who’s Demi?”

“Well, I don’t know much about her, but she’s a very old god.” Trixa began to explain. “Like, really old. I remember reading about her in the abbey growing up.”

“Strange, I’ve never heard of her,” Roland confessed.

“Some sort of cult thing?” Gorin considered.

“Not quite. Though I don’t doubt Demi still has followers out there. Her ways were… unorthodox. She was known as the Mother of Monsters, sometimes just the All-Mother. It’s said that many of the monsters we know today were born directly from her womb. Or from her influence.”

“So she’s evil?” Roland asked.

“I knew it,” Gorin grumbled.

“How could she be evil?” Ivy called, still moving slowly through carvings on the double doors. “Look at all these pictures! They’re all so nice.”

“She’s not evil,” Trixa said, shaking her head. “She’s just… She has… How do I put this? She has eclectic taste.”

Roland turned his attention back to Ivy and the double doors. The pink-haired elf was happily reaching the end of the little art collection, humming to herself. Nothing about the scene set off any alarm bells in his head, yet Trixa’s reticence worried him.

“What’s that mean?” Gorin asked.

“Well,” Trixa began, taking a deep breath. “You know how a minotaur is half-man and half-bull?”

“Sure.”

“If you were to make that thing happen, er, naturally. What two things would you need to combine to get a minotaur?”

Gorin and Roland again traded looks, but it was Ivy who chimed in this time as she skipped away from the double doors.

“Wait! So you’re saying she fucked a bull?” Ivy asked excitedly.

“Probably.”

“Oh gods!” the elf exclaimed, laughing.

“Damn,” Gorin remarked.

“So, a dungeon built by a monster fucker,” Roland considered. “Weird. I wonder why.”

“Some of the original myths about the minotaur were that they trapped it at the center of a labyrinth,” Trixa continued. “Maybe this Demi built a dungeon to house whatever beasts she made that she didn’t want to set loose on the world?”

“We might have a hell of a fight on our hands then,” Roland remarked.

“Not if this place is cleaned out, too,” Gorin said, shaking his head.

Roland considered that for a minute, thinking about their failure to find anything of value in the Green Hills Dungeon. Their bags were empty but for their hopes and dreams, and they hadn’t seen so much as a copper to make up for their lost investment. And then he thought about the map.

“I don’t think any has,” Roland thought out loud. “Trixa, pull out the map again. I don’t remember seeing anything like this on this floor.”

Trixa did as he asked, and the four of them examined the drawings of the Green Hills Dungeon inch by inch. As Roland thought, nothing was marked as attached to the room they’d just been in. Likewise, there wasn’t anything that even resembled this place on the map. This place didn’t exist on it.

“So no one even knows this place is here?” Ivy asked.

“I don’t think so,” Trixa admitted after putting away the yellowed parchment. “Seems like we’re the first to find it.”

“An undiscovered dungeon,” Roland realized. “That means-“

“Treasure.”

“Treasure.”

“Treasure.”

The party of adventurers exchanged new looks, ones of greed and growing anticipation, as they turned back to examine the double doors. As if the dungeon sensed their excitement, a sliver of light appeared between the doors, and they slowly began to split open, revealing a grand, marble hall lined with gleaming, sunny windows and a plush red carpet that led further in.

“Shall we?”