Morning came gently.
For once, the jungle allowed it.
A thin ground fog stretched low across the ruins, born of night-long humidity and condensation. Insect chatter faded to a dull murmur, and the birds had not yet risen into their full, deafening chorus. For a brief window, perhaps the only one the jungle ever granted, it was almost comfortable.
They packed up camp in near silence.
Porters gathered what little remained, Steve shifted obligingly under the weight of supplies, and the party returned to the site they had discovered the evening before; the overgrown corpse of an ancient city.
From above, it must once have been orderly streets laid out in neat grids, buildings aligned with care. Now, only the idea of those structures remained, marked by strange geometric patterns in the jungle's growth. Vines traced old roads. Trees rooted themselves in forgotten courtyards.
One building, however, still stood.
Barely.
It had once been a grand temple, wide, imposing, and important. Now only its back wall remained intact, along with just enough of the roof to shelter whatever lay inside. Everything else had collapsed inward, stone blocks dry-cut centuries ago now split apart by roots and time. The structure spanned nearly ninety feet across and rose thirty-five feet high, its entrances choked with rubble and fallen masonry.
Morgul and Snuffles remained with the porters. Still dazed, not fully awake. They find themselves a boulder to nap on.
The first to approach were Alona and Mouse.
"Right," Alona said dryly. "Found it. Should we turn around and go back to the city?"
She paused. "…No?"
Mouse stared at the ruin. "I'm not gonna lie. This screams booby traps. Like, statues that come alive traps. Or darts through eyeballs traps. And it's just us, a flying monkey, and Steve."
She glanced at the monkey. It screamed softly.
"I'm worried about George's odds."
Alona knelt and began inspecting the rubble-clogged entrances. "I'll do a quick walk about.
After a careful search, she straightened. "Nothing obvious. No pit traps. No pressure plates. No glyphs."
Mouse frowned. "If it's just rubble… could I not get very angry at it?"
"I'm imagining you stub your toe and decide the temple has offended you personally," Alona said.
Mouse cracked her knuckles. "Exactly."
Before smashing anything, Mouse circled the structure, eyes narrowing as she studied the stonework, the way debris had settled.
Then she stopped.
"Oh."
Alona looked up. "Oh what?"
Mouse pointed. "Trap door."
"…It's a trap."
"It feels like a trap," Mouse agreed.
Alona sighed. "Let's check it for traps before we anger it."
After another careful examination, nothing revealed itself.
"No obvious danger," Alona said slowly. "Which I hate."
Mouse nudged her. " You first".
"You've got thieves' tools, right?"
"Yes," Alona said. "Which is apparently all you want from your cleric."
With careful, practiced motions, she worked the mechanism. Stone shifted. A hidden door opened, revealing a short corridor descending into darkness.
They both peered inside.
Darkvision flickered to life.
Inside, the chamber opened wide fifty feet deep, thirty five feet high. Fallen pillars littered the floor, shattered by centuries of collapse. Sunlight filtered through cracks high above, illuminating drifting dust and hanging vines.
The back wall stopped them cold.
A massive bas relief of a bat-like figure dominated the stone nine feet tall, wings spread nearly twenty feet wide. Before it stood an altar, carved into it a writhing mass of rats, weasels, and worms. A screaming bat's head jutted from its front, frozen in eternal agony. On either side, two enormous metal bat wings eight feet long and wickedly sharp were mounted like ceremonial blades.
The floor before the altar was worn smooth by countless feet.
"Oh," Mouse said. "I like what they've done with the place."
Alona stared. "Its certainly something."
She swallowed. "I recognise this place."
The memory of the serpent shrine surfaced immediately.
"Zotzilaha," Alona murmured. "God of bats. Vampires. Underworld."
Mouse blinked. "So… friendly?"
Alona scanned the chamber again, slower this time. "I want this to be our fallback. A base camp if something goes wrong and we need a way out."
From the inside, the hidden entrance was clearly visible.
"Good," Alona said. "We bring the crew in here. Guarded. Safe-ish."
"And they can hold the monkey," Mouse added.
"They can absolutely hold the monkey."
Time is spent relocating everyone; porters, supplies, Steve (who somehow fit) and the still napping Snuffles and Morgul.
Steve uncoiled slightly, settling into the cracks and shadows like he belonged there.
Alona looked around the chamber, now filled with quiet breathing and flickering torchlight.
"This," she said softly, "is where things go wrong."
Mouse nodded. "Yeah."
Mouse stared at the bat relief.
"…I don't like it," she said flatly.
"That feels like an understatement," Alona replied.
With most of the temple collapsed inward, there weren't many choices. The altar and the bas-relief dominated the chamber like a pair of accusations, and if there was anything to be learned or unleashed it would be one of those two.
"Split up?" Mouse suggested. "You do the altar. I'll do the creepy bat."
Alona sighed, already resigned. "Of course I'll do the altar. Cleric privilege."
She approached it slowly. Up close, the altar was worse; rats, weasels, worms carved in nauseating detail, all writhing together. The screaming bat head carved into the front stared outward, its open mouth… suggestive.
"That mouth looks like a lever," Alona muttered. "Or a mechanism. Or a very bad idea."
Closer inspection revealed handholds along the front edge and hinges at the back.
"It tips," she said.
She checked for traps. Nothing obvious.
"Can I lift it?"
She tried. She failed.
Mouse cracked her neck. "Would you like a stronger pair of hands?"
"Most kindly," Alona said, stepping aside.
They positioned themselves, side by side, hands gripping the stone.
Mouse paused. "Alona I swear to the gods if this goes wrong I'm going to feed you to steve."
They lifted.
The altar rose and instantly, the metal bat wings mounted beside it snapped forward in a brutal arc.
Steel screamed through the air.
Mouse twisted aside at the last second, instincts honed by rage and disaster, but Alona wasn't fast enough. One blade carved through her, then the other followed through the same path.
"Owww," Alona said, eloquently.
Blood splashed across the altar, running through the carved vermin grooves in an unsettlingly designed way.
The wings retracted.
Silence.
"If I'd known it would do that," Mouse said quietly, "I'd have just taken the hit."
"That's very kind," Alona replied, pressing a hand to her side. "And entirely unnecessary."
She healed herself, light flaring briefly in the gloom.
"Well," Mouse said, eyeing the altar warily, "let's not do that again."
Concern rippled through the onlookers.
"We're only a few minutes into this," Mouse added, "and you're already injured."
"Occupational hazard."
Mouse turned toward the bas-relief.
The bat figure loomed, its wings carved half out of the wall, its eyes dark hollows. She circled it slowly, letting her gaze wander.
Then she stopped.
"There's a door," she said. "Behind the left wing."
Alona looked up sharply. "Of course there is."
"And," Mouse added, squinting, "the bat's mouth is hollow."
They both stared at it.
"Who's volunteering?" Mouse asked.
"Should I get on your shoulders?" Alona offered weakly.
Mouse glanced back at the porters. "…We do have expendable arms."
Alona frowned. "I don't love that sentence."
Mouse sighed. "I'll ask nicely."
She offered five gold. That changed things. Eventually, one porter stepped forward. He rolled up his sleeve, hands shaking.
"Cuix'tli," he said when asked his name.
Cuix'tli reached into the bat's mouth.
Further.
Further.
Sweat beaded on his brow.
Then
"Thunk."
"Agh—something's got me!"
A loud click echoed through the chamber, and the massive bat wing shifted, sliding away to reveal a hidden passage behind it.
Cuix'tli's arm did not come free. The wing pinning him in place.
"That's awkward," Alona said.
"Very awkward," Mouse agreed.
Then the bat's eyes began to glow.
Cold. Hungry. Intent.
"Uh—" Mouse started.
The will hit them like a wave.
Alona staggered—but held.
Mouse froze.
So did the porters.
So did Selita.
Every living thing in the chamber locked in place, faces frozen mid-fear.
"Mouse?" Alona said, poking her gently.
Nothing.
The only person still moving was Cuix'tli shielded by the wing, unable to see the glowing eyes.
"Why aren't you going yet?" he called.
"Everyone's… stuck," Alona said carefully. "Can you pull your arm out?"
"I've been trying!"
Beyond the wing, a dusty stairwell descended, curving out of sight.
Alona swallowed.
"I think," she said slowly, "that when I go down, this might open. Or release you. Or kill me. Hard to say."
"What's life without a little risk?" she added, with forced cheer.
She descended.
Ten feet.
Twenty.
Thirty.
At the bottom, she entered a new chamber, a narrow foyer with a visible lever set into the wall, a wheel half embedded nearby.
Alona stared at it.
"I really want to pull that," she muttered, "but if I do and something happens to me, this becomes a very awkward statue exhibition."
She checked for traps.
Nothing obvious.
Above her, Mouse tried again to break free.
She failed.
Badly.
"Sorry, Alona," Mouse said faintly. "Looks like you're on your own."
The bat god watched.
Alona searched the foyer again, more out of stubbornness than confidence.
Nothing.
Nothing obvious. Nothing reassuring. Just stale air, dust, and the lingering sense that the temple was watching her..
"That's a very tempting lever," she said to herself, eyeing it.
The corridor continues, it's musty. No light. No sign anyone's been here in a long time.
Alona poked her head down the passage: ten feet forward, a right turn, then straight again silent and dry, every inch smelling like old stone and older secrets.
"In for a penny," she muttered. "In for a pound."
She yanked the lever.
A click echoed. Somewhere in the wall, the stone wheel beneath it shuddered—like a mechanism had been released, or a lock had just sighed open.
Alona climbed back up to check the bat relief.
Mouse was still frozen in place, staring, unmoving caught by the glowing eyes like a moth with anger issues.
But the porters and Selida had shaken it off, now visibly making a point of not looking at the bat face, heads turned away like children refusing to acknowledge a scary painting.
Cuix'tli, however, was still pinned. Still stuck. Still swearing a poetic storm behind the shield of the wing.
"Cuix'tli!" Alona called. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes!" he snapped. "Why aren't you helping?"
"Trying!," Alona said. "Also your arm—"
"My arm is still stuck!"
Alona considered the situation: a trapped employee, a paralyzed barbarian, a glowing bat god, and a staircase leading down into the unknown.
She did what all heroes do when faced with impossible odds.
She dragged Mouse.
By the armpits.
Mouse slid along the stone like a displeased statue being relocated in a museum. The moment Alona pulled her out of the bat's line of sight, Mouse's body jolted back to life.
She blinked rapidly. "Okay. Right. I'm not looking at shiny lights anymore."
"Excellent," Alona said. "Shall we continue our adventures?"
"Go on then," Mouse said, as if she hadn't just been used as furniture.
They returned to the lever room. The lever was still up. The wheel still sat half-embedded in the wall, broad teeth like a gear, silent and unhelpful.
They chose the corridor.
"Very stealthily," Alona said, meaning it with her whole heart.
"What could go wrong?" Mouse added, guaranteeing disaster.
The corridor ran on. Dry, dusty, unused. Stone lintels lined the upper walls, about three feet from the ceiling. Then it widened abruptly into a perfect cube-shaped chamber: fifteen feet on each side, its floor corrugated like a metal grate.
Above them, set into the ceiling, was a bronze circular trap door—latched shut.
Metal runs formed ladders along the corners, leading up and across toward the trap door, but many runs were broken. Rusty spikes jutted where handholds should've been.
Alona stared at it.
Mouse stared at it.
"I have a nasty feeling this is a trap," Alona said.
"Same," Mouse agreed.
They investigated.
They learned nothing.
They perceived.
They learned less.
They were, as Alona put it, "both spectacularly unequipped for investigating a dungeon."
So Alona fixed the one thing she could fix: she touched her holy symbol and cast light. Warm glow spilled out, brightening the corridor. Color returning to the world, shadows shrinking back.
No oil. No grease. No obvious mechanism.
Which, honestly, was worse.
Mouse sighed. "Since you're the healer, I'll go first."
"Fair," Alona said, and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Guidance."
From behind them, Selida's voice echoed faintly down the passage.
"How's it going?"
"Not very well," Mouse called back.
"Cuix'tli's arm is still stuck!"
"Find Morgul and Snuffles!"
"We don't know where they went!"
Mouse pinched the bridge of her nose. "Give us five minutes. Me and Alona are working through some things down here."
Alona cupped her hands and spoke like an answering machine.
"Thank you for your attempt to reach Alona and Mouse. Please leave a message after the—"
Instead of a tone, Mouse screamed quietly into her own hands.
Somewhere behind them, Cuix'tli cursed in a language none of them spoke, sounding increasingly convinced that five gold was not sufficient compensation for eternal arm imprisonment.
Then Mouse stepped forward.
One booted foot landed on the corrugated floor with a dull clang.
Nothing.
She shifted her weight.
Still nothing.
She took another step, fully inside the cube now, surrounded by ladders and broken spikes and rust. The air felt stale. Dust clung to her breath.
"I'm too much of a hefty girl for this shit," she muttered.
She did a quick, awkward little skippy walk half Grinch, half panic and crossed to the far side. Alona followed, careful and tense, listening to the quiet sprinkle of rust flakes falling behind them like the dungeon was shedding dandruff.
Beyond the cube, the corridor turned again and opened into a larger alcove.
And there, blocking the way, was something impossibly beautiful.
A wall of green polished stone. Solid jade. Carved in delicate Mesoamerican patterns.
They approached. Up close, it wasn't a wall at all.
It was a disc.
Seven feet across, fitted like a plug into the stone.
Alona leaned in, light angled into the thin seam around its edge, only the width of a finger.
"There's… a protrusion behind it," she murmured. "Like it's meant to slot into something."
She touched it.
The entire disc immediately fell forward like it had been waiting for that exact moment.
"YOLO," Alona breathed, and threw herself aside.
Stone hit the floor with a heavy, booming crash. Dust burst outward in a thick cloud, and for a moment the air was all grit and ancient breath.
Then the light shone through.
Revealing a chamber beyond.
Jewelry and knickknacks lay scattered across the floor: beaten copper, polished obsidian shells, quartz, coral. In the center, mounted on a slab of marble, was the preserved form of a centaur—green-tinted, wrapped in lacquered leather, feathered regalia, copper wire ornaments.
It knelt like a horse at rest.
But the human torso remained upright—too upright. Too deliberate.
It held a pike, bronze haft tipped with a broad, flame-shaped spearhead, blue-gray and menacing.
The weapon pointed toward a closed door across the room.
Mouse stared.
Alona stared.
"Wow," Alona said. "What an introduction."
Mouse swallowed. "Shiny things."
Alona deadpanned, "Mouse runs across, triggers two traps, gets eaten by a fish."
"No fish have swim speeds," Mouse snapped automatically, then paused. "…Wait. Dead fish?"
They didn't touch the pike.
They didn't touch the door.
They poked at treasure instead—because of course they did.
It didn't seem trapped.
It also didn't seem particularly valuable, unless you happened to be a very fancy crow.
Then Snuffles arrived, breathless, having tracked them down after waking to a camp full of confused porters, a trapped Cuix'tli, and no sign of his friends.
He took one look at the kneeling centaur and the door and said the obvious thing.
"I feel like the centaur mummy is more important than the treasure."
Mouse nodded grimly. "We think there's a Medusa behind that door."
"No," Alona said calmly. "You think that."
Snuffles checked the door with actual competence.
"No trap. Not locked. Rope handle. Opens toward us."
"What could possibly go wrong?" Alona said.
Snuffles yanked it open.
A ten-foot stairwell descended into darkness.
Cooler air drifted up. A faint sense of moisture.
"Okay," Snuffles said. "That's unpleasant."
They moved down.
The next chamber was plain and small. Two fountains stood left and right, bronze inlaid with marble. One was cracked and dry, crusted with lime deposits. The other held two feet of dark water fed by a trickle. A pale, gauzy crayfish shape lay at the bottom among lime encrustations.
A well sat opposite.
Snuffles leaned over it.
His breath didn't ripple the surface.
He reached outnand realized, with growing confusion, that it wasn't water at all.
It was black volcanic glass.
"…Interesting," Snuffles said, not knowing what else to do with that.
They split up.
Alona approached the dark water.
As she peered in, something glinted beneath the surface.
A key.
Archaic, oddly shaped.
Alona's eyes lit up with the pure, foolish optimism of someone who had learned nothing all day.
She reached into her pack.
And produced a net.
Mouse opened her mouth.
Probably to say "don't." Just as Alona dipped the net into the water.
The water erupted.
Stone cracked, water surged upward, tearing free from the basin as if yanked by an unseen will. In a heartbeat, the liquid mass twisted into something vast and furious; a living column of churning water that lunged forward and swallowed Alona whole.
Alona's world went cold and loud and wet.
She failed to wrench free.
Pain slammed into her.
The room became a roaring blackness and crushing force. Water forced its way into her mouth and nose as invisible pressure wrapped around her limbs, pinning her in place. She flailed instinctively, but every movement was sluggish. Smothered by the relentless current. The roar of rushing water filled her ears until it drowned out everything else.
She was restrained. Grappled. Engulfed.
And she couldn't breathe.
"Fantastic," she thought, somewhere underwater. "Absolutely fantastic."
The sound of Alona failing to escape the fountain was not heroic.
It was… wet.
"Well," Alona thought, in the last calm moment before panic swallowed her whole, "this is… inconvenient."
Above the surface, chaos exploded.
The elemental surged again, slamming into both Mouse and Snuffles with the force of a collapsing wave. The room became a storm; water whipping across stone, fountains overflowing, slick floors turning treacherous beneath their feet.
Snuffles staggered back, soaked and bruised, blinking water out of his eyes he stared at the vortex of living water with the haunted look of someone scanning his mental spell list for "remove drowning."
"Yeah," he muttered. Voice thin. "No safe extraction spells. Cool. Great. Love that for us."
He blasted it anyway.
Eldritch force slammed into the roiling water. The creature shuddered, its body rippling, splashing, losing cohesion where the magic struck. It was working.
Just not quickly enough.
Inside the elemental, Alona's strength began to fade. Her world cold, heavy and tightening. Exhaustion crept in like a hand around her throat. Her chest burned. Every instinct screamed for air, but there was none to be had. Only pressure, cold and the terrifying certainty that the thing holding her did not intend to let her go.
Then the elemental surged forward. Not like a wave but like a fist. It expanded until it dominated the cramped chamber completely. A living waterspout that punched.
It swung at Snuffles- hard. He staggered back half swallowed by spray and managed: "Yep. That hurts."
It turned toward Mouse.
Mouse moved on instinct alone, dodging the blow by the width of a breath.
She had one thought, and it was simple.
"Fuck this"
The rage hit her like lightning.
"Alona," Mouse shouted, planting her feet. "Try and—"
Alona did not reply. She gurgled helplessly.
Mouse's expression hardened into something primal and deeply unhelpful.
She roared, drew her greatsword, and began hacking at the water like she was trying to cut a storm in half. The blade hit with a heavy, wet impact spray bursting outward as if the creature was bleeding liquid. One strike landed clean.
The second missed, because of course it did. The creature shifting too fast, too fluid, too much like fighting a tantrum.
Meanwhile Snuffles did the next best thing he could think of:
He summoned an imp. With a crackle of infernal energy, it popped into existence beside him; wings snapping open. It took one look at the scene.
water vortex, barbarian rage, cleric drowning and very bravely decided this was someone else's problem.
Still, it tried.
It darted in like a mystical little rescue crane, attempting to hook Alona out with its tail the way you'd snag a fish from a river.
It failed.
The water surged violently and the imp recoiled fast, narrowly avoiding becoming the second thing in the room to learn what suffocation feels like.
"Give it the old college try," it muttered, retreating.
Footsteps echoed from the stairs. Using the stealth only a rogue would possess Morgul crept down the stairs. Only to step into a room that looked like the aftermath of a plumbing accident in a cursed basilica. A roiling wall of water dominating the room, Mouse and Snuffles battered and drenched and Alona barely visible bobbed helplessly like a tragic cork.
He stopped short, stared, blinked once.
"What," he said flatly "The fuck have i just walked into?"
No time for answers.
Morgul lunged forward, hands quick, timing perfect. He waited for the exact moment the vortex tossed Alona toward the edge and in one swift motion snatched her out.
Alona burst free in a spray of water and collapsed onto the stone floor. Air rushed painfully back into her lungs. She gasped, coughed, dragged breath after breath as her vision snapped back into focus. The choking grip of exhaustion loosened instantly.
She was alive.
She was wet.
She was furious.
Morgul stood over her, dagger still clenched in one hand, eyes wide. "Again, what the fuck."
"Just a minor inconvenience" Alona pushed herself upright.
"Now," Alona spat, eyes blazing. "Let's bring some pain."
She threw up her Crusader's Mantle. Holy energy flaring outward, wrapping her allies in a radiant edge.
For a heartbeat, it looked like they had it.
The elemental roared, recoiling as blade and magic tore through it. It was losing cohesion, losing shape, spilling itself across the floor like it was forgetting how to stay solid.
And then it struck back
It struck like a falling river.
The first hit dropped Alona.
The second hit, while she lay helpless, nearly knocked her out.
The world tilted. Sound narrowed. Her vision dimmed into a tunnel of torchlight and panic.
Mouse surged forward, hands shaking, and stabilised her with sheer stubbornness.
Alona clung to consciousness by a thread. "Yay," she managed weakly, because apparently sarcasm was still operational even when her body wasn't.
Snuffles blasted again.
Again.
Again.
The elemental staggered, its cohesion failing, its shape slumping, water spilling off it like it was losing the will to remain solid.
Morgul stepped in, dagger raised. Missed once, "curses," then struck again. The dagger pierced the elemental like a water balloon.
The entire creature burst. Water exploded outward into the treasure chamber, drenching everything, knocking Morgul back a step.
The roar of rushing water faded into an uneasy silence, broken only by the sound of something dripping down the stone steps. The last remnants of the elemental slithered away like a retreating tide, leaving the air heavy, damp and ringing with breathless disbelief.
Morgul stood at the top of the stairs, chest heaving, dagger still raised, staring down at the wreckage as if afraid the water might pull itself back together out of spite. "Well," he muttered, "that could've gone worse."
Alona lay crumpled at the foot of the steps, unmoving. Mouse by her side trying aggressively to shake her till she got up. "Nope, we're not losing you to a sentient fountain."
Snuffles was already there, yanking open packs, glass bottles clinking urgently as he searched. "We've got this," he said, more to himself than to anyone else. "We've definitely got this." He forces Alona to drink a potion of greater healing.
Relief, thin and fragile began to settle.
Somewhere above them, Morgul's voice drifted down again, sharper now. "Uh. Hate to interrupt the dramatic pause, but there's… something else up here."
Morgul froze.
Across the room, the preserved centaur mummy; still kneeling, still posed like a statue, shifted.
Withered fingers tightened around the pike. Its lips cracked as its mouth opened, releasing a dry, terrible rattle. Its eyes snapped open but sockets weren't empty. They held golden stones instead, plated and dead and gleaming in the light.
Mouse shouting from the bottom of the stairs. "define something else."
Morgul swallowed. "A mummy. With four legs."
Alona chose that exact moment to gasp awake. She sucked in a lungful of air like someone surfacing from a nightmare, eyes flying open. Colour rushed back into her face as she coughed, spluttered and then astonishingly laughed.
"Oh," Alona rasped, "that was unpleasant."
Mouse stared at her. "You were dead."
"Temporarily," Alona replied, now sitting up with stubborn determination. "I objected."
Snuffles let out a breath he'd clearly been holding since the moment she'd gone under. "Welcome back."
Before anyone could say more, the stone floor trembled.
Up in the treasure chamber, something scraped against marble.
Morgul now more panicked by his impending doom "Guys, a little help please." He backed away slowly as the mummified centaur hauled itself upright. It turned its head slowly toward him, and raised its spear.
Morgul stared at it in disbelief "…Oh, come on."
Below, Mouse rose to her feet, rolling her shoulders like she'd just finished stretching.
"Right," she said. "Round two."
She sprinted up the steps without waiting for agreement, blade already in motion.
The mummy turned, ancient rage crackling through its bones as it raised its weapon — only to be met by steel, fire, and fury in quick succession. Blows landed. Sparks flew. Feathers burned. The narrow stairwell filled with heat and the stink of ancient wrappings catching flame.
Snuffles hurled magic past Mouse's shoulder, the blast lighting the chamber in brilliant orange as the centaur staggered back, shrieking in a language long dead.
Alona, still soaked and unsteady, lifted her holy symbol. Radiant light poured forth, searing the creature as divine power stripped away what little strength remained in its preserved form.
The mummy tried to flee.
It didn't make it far.
Fire bloomed. Wrappings ignited. With a final, hollow cry, the centaur collapsed into ash and embers, the golden stones of its eyes clattering lifelessly across the floor.
Silence fell again, this time, for real.
Smoke drifted lazily upward. Somewhere in the distance, water continued to drip.
Mouse rested her hands on her knees, breathing hard.
"…So," she said. "Anyone else feel like this dungeon is warming up?"
Alona pushed herself to her feet, brushing dust from her armor.
"If that was the introduction," she replied, "I'm deeply concerned about the main act."
Morgul stared at the ashes, then at his companions.
"I went to sleep," he said slowly. "And woke up to this."