The Book of Dungeons - A weak to strong litRPG epic

The contest map showed Toadkiller and Audigger veering further east to Farseed. Audigger had almost caught up to him, though her airborne transport would keep the two separated. In all likelihood, she’d reach Farseed before him—but we were much closer than either. From Farseed, we could take a skiff to Oxum and beat them both to whatever advantage Darkstep promised.

The Bluepeaks and Grenspur mountain group didn’t hide the sun this far north, and it felt like we had more travel time in the day.

Fabulosa shielded her eyes against the setting sun. “How far is Farseed from here—as the crow flies?”

Lusha weighed the question as if she never considered how far the nearest port might be. “About twenty miles, give or take, but you’ll want to follow the curve of the coast. That’s about twice as long.”

Fabulosa turned to me. “We could walk fifteen miles in under a day.”

Lusha admired our adventuring gear. “There are beasties out there, but it looks like you might make the journey, sure enough.”

I crossed my arms. “What kinds of monsters are out there.”

“The kind that doesn’t bother travelers with enough sense to stay on the coast.” Lusha gestured toward the skiff lying at the top of the gulley.

She didn’t extrapolate. Instead of challenging her, I changed the subject. I gestured to the pink sheets. “Are you drying the sails now?”

Lusha scoffed. “What, these? No, these are drift filters for harvesting brill.”

“What are brills?”

Lusha checked both of our faces to see if we were putting her on. Eventually, our blank stares convinced her of our naivety. She emphasized the first word in her reply by dropping the S. “Brill are little bugs that drift in the fog. They make up most of the region’s curry dishes. Have a look.”

Lusha walked to the hanging sheet and pointed to pink translucent flower petals sticking to the fabric. “They turn pink when they die—otherwise, they’re hard to see. That’s why we drop filters in the vapor—we scoop them right up. I’m sun bleaching them in the offseason until they lose their color.”

Upon closer inspection, the flower looked more like a bug or a wiggly shrimp-thing.

Fabulosa sniffed the bug. “Brill are seasonal?”

Lusha shook her head and thumbed toward the fog bank on the horizon. “Nah, but the aerocline is—it doesn’t reach us until early summer. That’s when we can take the skiffs out.”

The finality of her opinion dampened our plans for a shortcut.

Fabulosa pointed to the Northeast. “You mentioned you wouldn’t walk to Farseed from here—I mean, walk straight there, through Blyeheath. Are there dangers besides creatures?”

Lusha solemnly nodded.

Our host’s reticence controlled the conversation. Making us ask for every detail kept us in our place as nonlocals, but Fabulosa’s shifting posture showed impatience at Lusha’s theatrics. After spending so long in the mountains, the lowland humidity made my partner irritable.

I asked for an explanation so Fabulosa didn’t have to. “Why don’t we want to cross through Blyeheath?” The question sounded foolish, and I felt stupid for even asking it, but I didn’t mind playing the role of the deferential out-of-towner as long as Lusha remained forthcoming.

“You could try, but if there’s a swell, it’ll send fog rolling in. You might even get deep aerocline.”

“You mentioned that word before. What’s an aerocline?”

“Why, that’s the fog—or rather, the border between normal air and the vapor carrying the brill. You’ve got your upper aerocline—that’s about ten yards beneath normal atmosphere.”

I lifted the mask hanging around my neck. “That’s breathable, right?”

Lusha nodded, stood up, and rummaged through a crate of gadgets and tools. “If you’re set on walking through Blyeheath, you’ll need one of these. Here—take it. I’ve got plenty of them. It’s an aerometer. It’ll tell you how deep you are in the aerocline. This hash mark shows the limits you can get away with using a mask. Anything below that is toxic. We call that the lower aerocline. Mask or not, if you go there, you’re not coming back.”

The aerometer looked like a thermometer, except instead of mercury, a hollow puffball connected to a thin spring winding around a stick. Lusha held it vertically, like a lantern, showing how the puffball raised when submerged in the fog.

“Even if the gauge is off, you can recalibrate it to another hashmark with your coughing. The lower aerocline continues to sea level.” Lusha pointed to the breathing filter looped around Fabulosa’s forehead—making them look like a pair of goggles. “You best drop that around your neck, Missy. Less of a chance it’ll fall off.” Lusha tugged at a breathing apparatus looped around her neck, hidden beneath her work smock.

Fabulosa grunted and nodded, pulling down the headband around her neck. “You want to camp here, head out in the morning?”

Unless we wanted to fight Audigger or Toadkiller in Farseed, we had to keep moving, but we also needed to reset our cooldowns. Besides, charging into Blyeheath after dark didn’t seem a wise decision. I nodded and loosened the Dark Room rope from my waist.

“You’re welcome to stay for supper, but you’ll have to sleep in the shed.”

“Oh, we don’t—”

“If you don’t mind brill, I’ve got plenty in the pot.”

Fabulosa turned to me. “Hot food sounds good.”

I shrugged and checked out the shed. Stacks of brill filters looked like comfortable mattresses, but the warmth and humidity would make for poor sleeping in the shed. I preferred the Dark Room and tossed up the rope.

We ate a tasty brill sauce poured over sprouts and shoots of steamed vegetables.

The bounty of food made homesteads like Lusha’s common along Blyeheath’s coast. She explained that skiffs used trapped air in treated leather balloons to maintain buoyancy above the fog. She used local words to describe Blyeheath’s flora and fauna, but I kept Gladius in his scabbard. Dinner was casual, and unsheathing a longsword didn’t seem appropriate in her cramped home.

Our host refused our offer to help clean up, which was just as well, for there didn’t seem to be a sink, vat, or water bucket in her cooking area, and it would have been more trouble to explain how to help than doing everything herself.

Fabulosa and I thanked her for her hospitality, retired in the Dark Room, and awoke at dawn.

Haze lingered in the air, but it was a normal fog, not the thick, gray vapor of Blyeheath. The moisture obscured the sun, though the eastern sky looked brighter than the west.

When I left the Dark Room, I checked our position on the contest map. Duchess’s stationary dot showed us where Farseed stood. She hadn’t taken yesterday’s skiff to Oxum. Audigger showed significant gains overnight. She pulled ahead of Toadkiller by cornering Grenspur and bypassing Heaven’s Falls. Judging by everyone’s speed, we’d reach Duchess at least a day before her.

The pink sheets remained strung on their frames, and the only sign of Lusha was a whisp of smoke wafting from her chimney. Fabulosa studied the horizon. “If we can get to Farseed before noon, I reckon we’ll be able to gain a day on Toadkiller and Audigger. The only skiff to Oxum leaves in the afternoon.”

I bit into an unsatisfying piece of jerky from my inventory and nodded.

“I wouldn’t mind getting another sit-down meal if we have time for lunch.”

“They do lunches up north?”

Fabulosa shrugged. “If we pay them enough, someone will rustle up something. I’m looking forward to three meals a day after this contest.”

She looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded. The people of Miros nibbled on things to stave off their hunger. It didn’t bother me as much since fending for myself was usually better than eating with my aunt and uncle back in Atlantic City, a world that seemed so far away I could scarcely believe it still existed.

I summoned Jasper, and we rode him down the gentle declination. We passed the Lusha’s drydocked skiffs and headed into the Blyeheath wetlands.

What I thought was wet gravel turned out to be fields of mushrooms, and clouds of buzzing flies plagued us as we walked through them. Barely a half hour passed before Jasper whinnied and stalled.

His hooves sank into fresh mud, almost half a foot deep, and his protests to move forward forced us to change our plans.

Fabulosa and I dismounted Jasper, and I dismissed him in a puff of green smoke. With the sun rising, the ground glistened with moisture. It looked like we were going to be trudging through mud for quite some time. I turned back to see how far we’d progressed, but Lusha’s village was nowhere in sight. Thanks to our interface map, we wouldn’t get lost, but I doubted we’d make fifteen miles as fast as we’d planned. At this pace, it might be an all-day affair—which still should put us on a skiff before Audigger or Toad made it to Farseed.

Fabulosa borrowed my Eagle Eyes and handed them back to me. “Do you see that deep gray shape on the horizon? That’s the Farseed peninsula jutting out from the south. We’re headed for the northern tip.”

Though the blur she pointed to was barely visible, her confidence raised my spirits.

Blyeheath was desolate. No trees or bushes grew on the landscape. Moss and tiny thatches of greenery looked more like seaweed than grass, coloring the landscape of gray and brown mud. The ugly fields of toadstools offered no firmer footing, and we made slow progress. Flies buzzed everywhere, and we constantly fanned our faces to keep them away. Every five minutes, we made short jumps using Slipstream.

Fabulosa tested the stagnant, humid air by flipping her hood. She meandered on a slow, southeast heading. She could have carried me in the Dark Room, but I wasn’t about to wager my position in the contest, hoping she’d retrieve me. While I trusted her, a foul wind could easily drift her into an aerocline and knock us both out of the contest.

The topography leveled to a plain, and the landscape’s only vertical elements were tall mushrooms. Some grew in small colonies, raising many feet above the ground. Our masks dangled from our necks because the humidity was so thick, it was easier to breathe through scarves.

We neared an ankle-deep blanket of fog obscuring the ground beneath it. From a distance, it looked like the shore of an ocean, except no waves broke, no ebb, or flow churned along the ground. Fabulosa waded into the fog, but the vapor only stirred around her feet.

The effect disconcerted me. If an archaeodon, or Blyeheath’s equivalent of an archaeodon lay in our path, we wouldn’t know until we stepped on it. But without other fauna, we saw little reason to expect a predator.

We stopped frequently to give our sore legs a break. Mud caked onto our boots, and every raised foot required pulling it from the sucking ground. We tried several techniques to make traveling easier, but nothing worked. Following the other’s footprints made things more difficult. Dig only cleared a path to deeper mud. The gentle wind blew due north, so Fabulosa couldn’t use her cape, even for short hops.

The fog rose up to our knees, and we encountered a swath of lily pads that bobbed up and down on the vapor. After judicious buffing of Heavenly Favor and casts of Detect Magic, I ventured closer to the floating plants. They strung together like vines across the top of the fog, buoyed by little air sacks that reminded me of kelp that rarely drifted ashore on Atlantic City beaches.

The vines floating on the fog tore easily in my hands, dispelling my chief concern that they might Grapple us if we ever got tangled. The lilies crosshatched the fog’s surface in clumps. Their high visibility made them easy to avoid.

When the vapors reached our waist, we coughed until we donned our masks. Breathing through the filters took more effort, and I couldn’t understand Fabulosa when she spoke.

Soon after the battle standard appeared in Fabulosa’s hand, I knew what was coming. She zapped me for a 26-point Scorch and plunged it into the mud.

Fabulosa joins channel.

Apache joins channel.

Fabulosa I said that I’m sorry about the shortcut. This place stinks.

Apache That’s okay. It was worth a shot.

Fabulosa At this rate, it’ll cost us two days to cross. It would have been faster to take the scenic route.

Apache I wouldn’t say that—this is scenic, too.

After picking up the battle standard, we continued until the fog reached our chest. Fabulosa and I walked closely, and when she bent over to dip her head into the fog, she turned to me with wide eyes, making a downward gesture. Crouching in the fog blurred my vision until I rested on my heels. Fabulosa, by my side, did the same and pointed all around us.

The fog veiled vision into it from the regular atmosphere, but inside the aerocline, my naked eyes could see a milky white landscape of mud and mushrooms. I could see the surrounding area, but the fog obscured the sky and horizon. Only by standing up could I gain my bearings once again.

Fabulosa’s disembodied head surfaced next to me. She raised a finger above the fog line and pointed to the northeast, and I nodded in agreement that we should continue.

As we moved, we dipped our heads below the fog to see the upcoming terrain and imminent threats.

Thanks to the interface map, disorientation wasn’t a problem, and travel became easier once we entirely entered the aerocline. The ground gently descended until we stood ten feet beneath the fog’s ceiling. The further we dropped from the surface, our visibility improved to thirty or forty feet, though the atmosphere’s milky haze always lingered.

It was warm and humid, and soon, our hair wetted down from constant contact with fog. I kept wiping my face, and my mask fogged until Fabulosa showed me that spitting on the glass goggles kept the condensation from blinding me.

Particles suspended in the fog and their parallax across my field of vision gave me a greater sense of movement. I’d seen a similar effect in a local park when the air filled with dandelion fluff, but these particles were far more numerous.

Focusing on them revealed a size larger than I initially thought, for they were transparent and shaped like tiny clumps of thin, curved leaves. Yet the leaves waved like tentacles, and I doubted very much that these were vegetables at all. These particles weren’t seeds, but brill—the little bugs Lusha harvested for a living.

We walked until the fog darkened and the interface indicated sunset. No celestial bodies appeared beneath the aerocline. While I tossed up the Dark Room, the brill winked with little lights, like fireflies in the early summer. Fabulosa swung her arm through them, causing them to light up and react to her motion, leaving behind a swath of bioluminescence.

Even through the masks, we could see each other smiling.

The fog intensified sounds. Ever since we submerged ourselves in it, sucking noises and the tearing of plant matter filled my ears. Fabulosa removed her mask to ask if I could hear. She sounded louder than usual, but when she finished talking, she exploded in a fit of coughs, and it sounded like she was doing it directly into my ear. With her mask secure, I motioned not to do that again, and she nodded in agreement.

Odors smelled sharper than usual. The scent of musty water permeated the air, and the taste of freshly churned mud and soil never left my tongue.

It wasn’t my imagination that odors and sounds sharpened, even though the fog compromised our vision. The aerocline felt a little like a snowstorm whiteout, except the brill didn’t fall like snowflakes—they drifted on the slightest zephyr.

The bioluminescent brill gave me the idea to fire up Presence, but the spell made the fog around me opaque with light, reducing our visibility range. It was probably safer not to use artificial light sources anyway. If lights didn’t increase visibility, it made no sense to ring the dinner bell in this strange environment. I dismissed the magic glow.

As strange as it was to step into another dimension, climbing into the Dark Room restored a sense of normalcy. Even though it took effort to scrape mud off our boots, the adventure dumbstruck us.

“That shortcut was worth the effort, Fab. Good call.”

The magical experience left Fabulosa speechless. She grinned while toweling off.