I know now, of course, what sort of gear you should bring into a real dungeon run. God knows I’ve done enough to have gotten it down to something of a science. Light is your priority. Backup light is mandatory, several backups if possible. Rope, because you never know when a climb will be necessary, and a shovel for its surprisingly large variety of uses. You want medical equipment of course, but also a fire-starting kit. Means of marking off tunnels and walls, and a hundred other conveniences. It’s easy to go in expecting to defend yourself physically, but for the most part your fights will be with the environment.

  But that’s now, this was then. I didn’t know the first thing about dungeon-diving and was far too mentally lazy to give it any serious thought. I’d heard that there were dangerous, dark things found underground of course. Shamblers as a classic example, undead of any kind apparently loved the cool cavities below the earth, and so I readied myself for a fight more than anything. I covered myself in a light chainmail shirt my father had bought me, and armed myself with a fine steel blade my father had also bought me.

  To my credit, I actually was quite good with the weapon. I didn’t practice enough to be truly competitive with it, but there’d been a few duelling tourneys in the local region and I’d gotten into the top three in one of them the year before. Local things, of course, with no more than a few dozen contestants in each. And I had never fought to survive.

  But, in my head, that didn’t make much difference. I was a good fighter, and so I would be a good fighter no matter where or how I fought. The world is so very simple for the young and arrogant. The longer I spent preparing, the more confident and less fearful I grew. At the very least I did have the sense to bring a damned torch.

  It was not far from my house, the Dungeon. Not as far as the town itself was at least. I lived a mile away from the outskirts, a location which would have been unconscionably dangerous were it not for Jeeves—my father’s footman and personal guard. Not so dangerous living away from the walls with Jeeves.

  Granted, it was also a lot harder to do anything untowards—the miserable old fuck had eyes in the back of his head and ears exactly next to wherever you happened to be sneakily stepping. I’d gotten good at slipping by him over the years, but never while wearing a chain shirt. That day I got unlucky. Which was to say, I succeeded.

  Heading out without explanation might not have caused me impediment, but being seen to wear chain armour as I went definitely would have. Jeeves was busy, though, far from the doors, and so I left without issue. From there it was just a thousand paces or so until I was at the Dungeon. The rest of my little group were waiting beside it for me. All of them had changed clothes, like I had. That they’d arrived first probably showed how little options they all had compared to me. No armour, that I saw, unless one counted the extra layers of cloth Laryck had wrapped around himself. To my amusement, Will had gotten himself a weapon. Looked like a smith’s hammer, to me, a short, ugly thing. Not half so pretty or expensive as my sword. That observation bolstered me, and I felt the heroic airs wafting upwards even as I opened my mouth to speak.

  “You all ready to do some diving?” I flashed my most heroic grin, which I imagine was rather a poor example back then given my lack of experience. Despite the under-performance, it seemed to do nicely in galvanising the group. Save Vara, of course. She just looked at me cool as ever.

  “I’ve been ready for a good while now.” She noted, stabbing the words into me with as contemptuous an ease as ever. “You have the climbing gear?”

  I did, and could think of nothing better to respond with than simply hefting the rope to show her. She smirked at it, like I’d handed her a victory in this too.

  “Then go and find something heavy to tie it too, we’re next to the entrance right now.”

  I did tie it, around a nice big boulder that looked too heavy for all of us to move an inch even working together. The knot came quickly, and then we were all crowding around the jagged entrance. True to Laryck’s word, I could see right down into the pit. True to Will’s trembling, the extra lighting made it all look more scary, not less. What had once been a total mystery was now revealed with some level of clarity. The ancient stone, the depth, the sheer frigidity of it all. I suppressed a shudder, not without effort, and spoke again.

  “Who’s going first?” I asked.

  “I will, if you won’t.” Vara cut in, just as fast. Just as I’d planned.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I’ll go in before you, at last, you can be second. Will, Laryck, guard the entrance.”

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  Both of them nodded, apparently eager to be kept until last, and I started on the rope. I had one very good reason for heading down first of course—Vara wawa't wearing a skirt but I still got quite the view as she followed me down after.

  But the stupid lust didn’t last long, because after that we were down there. Actually down there, in the Dungeon. I had this…This moment. This striking bash of realisation, like my mind was coming unbound to my body, drifting backwards, watching everything I did as if it were just happening to someone else.

  Around me, there was a surprisingly large chamber. The ceiling was at least a dozen paces high, as we’d thought, and the walls seemed a good twenty paces apart. Everything was stone, everything was thick and hard. A trebuchet might’ve struggled against such a depth of rock.

  I knew, instantly, that I’d not be getting out of here if I lost this way in. Without the slightest doubt, and suddenly I found it hard to make myself let go of the rope, to remain where I was. Every nerve in my body twitched and tingled and twisted as it screamed at me to scramble back up and fuck right off out of there.

  It was, as usual, Vara who dissuaded me. And she did so with no more effort than she’d needed before.

  “Are you okay, Kyvaine?”

  She sounded concerned, and just a little patronising. There are very few blends of tone that will take so big a notch from a young man’s ego as that. I forced my hand open and stepped back just as Will reached the bottom, already panting and heaving from his short climb.

  “Of course.” I told her, “just holding the rope for the fatty.”

  Laryck chuckled, Will dropped his gaze to the floor, and I covered up my fear with an appropriate sneer.

  Vara did not look impressed.

  “You could’ve held it for me, too, or were you too busy staring?” I didn’t have a response to that, and while I was busy staring in mortification and trying to think of one she started out of the chamber and over towards the door. The only door. I scrambled after.

  Like the rest of us, Vara had changed her clothes. She was wearing the work clothes of a berry-picker, which meant belted pants and a jerkin despite her being a woman. It was a feature of the King’s War. So many young boys had been killed a decade or two ago, that we’d needed extra hands to do all sorts of farm work. Skirts had a nasty tendency of bunching up when women climbed or toiled along ladders the way you needed to for a full basket, so the trousers had naturally evolved as a concession to modesty.

  I’d always wanted to find the stupid fuck who pointed out that immodesty, and twat him one. Still, I was glad for it now, because the Dungeon really was quite dark. We’d lit our torches under the light of the outside world, and despite that none of us could see more than a few paces in front or behind. To make matters worse, we came out into a forking path the moment we left that first chamber.

  Now, the new me—the me tempered by so much experience—would know to mark these walls, and each other one I came across. If not to trail a rope for myself entirely. He would know, also, to have brought an excess of light and litter the sources of it as he went.

  This was the young, stupid, almost-brave me though.

  “Which way do we go?” Laryck asked, looking a great deal less certain than before.

  “Right of course.” I told him, picking the direction completely at random but saying it with such confidence—such utterly arbitrary certainty—that even Vara didn’t seem to bother thinking about why. I marched forwards like some damned general, and the other three fell into step behind me. In one moment I’d found myself at the head of the group, torch held high and free hand resting on the hilt of my sword.

  I looked incredibly heroic. Say what you will about my behaviour, but I must have looked heroic. If I hadn’t, nobody would ever have fallen for even one tenth of my bullshit down the years.

  So on we went, and it didn’t take long for that false courage to meet its match. More than its match.

  Oftentimes, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly where a man’s courage falters. Unless you’re watching his first dungeon-dive, that is, in which case it tends to be rather simple. Mine faltered when I saw the undead.

  We did not, at first, realise what it was we were looking at. About five paces ahead of us once we turned our first corner, it just…stood there. Still. Unnaturally still. Unnaturally silent.

  All of us glanced at one another, uncertain. Never keeping all our eyes off it at once, and all reluctant to make any sort of noise at all. Of course, I couldn’t just leave well enough alone. I had to be the hero. So I stepped forwards, hand on my sword, and called out in my booming hero’s voice.

  “You there, what are—WHAT THE FUCK!?” The moment it heard me, the creature turned and sprinted my way. That was where I saw its face, or what was left of it. A mask of desiccated meat hanging halfway free of the bone, matched by a score of other patches where viscera and skeleton was exposed elsewhere in its body. The monster wielded a great staff, and did not hesitate so much as an instant before shooting off.

  I would like to say that I freed my sword with a dextrous flourish and took the thing’s head off before it could so much as swing my way. I didn’t, of course. Panicking, my attempt to draw the thing was clumsy and got it caught in the sheathe. I yelped, tugged harder rather than sparing a quarter-second to draw it properly, and ended up snapping the straps keeping it about my waist.

  The scabbard, still attached to the blade, swung around and smacked hard into the creature’s face, halting its charge and turning forwards momentum into an off-balance stumble. A man might’ve been downed by such a fortunate blow, but I barely bought myself a second with this thing. Only the one second, though, and it took far less time to recover than my fear-frozen self. Before I could take a step either forwards—ha!— or back, the undead was lurching towards me all over.

  And this time, it managed a swing before I did.