Insight and Inspiration, Part 2

Cue the angry indignation and boos from my fellow novices.

"Veslingr!" someone from the journeyman class yelled. Their cry was followed by a brief chant of, "Human trash! Human trash! Human trash!"

The human bashing irked some of the humans in our raid group enough that someone spoke out, "Not all humans are the same, you know."

To which 'Anal' replied, "Shut up, human scum!" earning him another spear throw landing dangerously close to the space between his feet.

That quieted down the catcalls. Still, the tension among my fellow novices was so thick you could have cut it with a blade.

"And yet"—now that the cries had stopped, Lorelai began her speech anew—"it is for her father that Aine asks for aid!"

There were a few shocked cries. Some murmurs of confusion.

"Aine believes her father isn't an evil bastard as many of us might think, but a man suffering from a dungeon's curse," Lorelai explained.

Cursed—according to the dungeon section of Divah's guide, this was the cause and effect of a dungeon's existence.

A curse born from emotions such as fear, hatred, envy, and desire build up over time in a given area—which in this dungeon's case was 'resentment' growing around the mausoleum—and taints the magical energy permeating the soil, the air, and even the local flora and fauna. This taint spreads and grows, corrupting the land and creating a hazardous zone that realmsverse scientists have dubbed dungeons. These dungeons then become incubators for the archetypal monsters born from the very same emotions that give a dungeon its life. As these monsters grow in number and power, the curse they carry spreads back into the world, affecting people living close to a dungeon both physically and mentally, cursing them in turn so that they too propagate the same dark emotions within their community. Thus begins a cycle of violence and misery that only adventurers can put a stop to.

"We're more than just explorers and treasure seekers, kiddo," Divah had once told me. "We protect the realmsverse from their worst selves. We burn the rot that takes root in the great tree. We save the souls drowning in their weaknesses. This is what makes us worthy."

"Thanks to LEPRCON's prior investigation of the case," Mistress Lorelai's voice drowned out my reminiscing, bringing me back to the here and now, "we've discovered that Aine's situation is not unique."

The sudden silence of the gathering seemed more deafening to me than all the recent uproar.

"In the nearby town of Kells Falls"—Our dökkálfar instructor raised her arm and pointed a finger westward—"mild-mannered humans with low inclinations for alcohol have recently become violent drunks who've assaulted and abused their loved ones in acts of violence that have been escalating over a brief period and have already claimed two deaths."

I heard Scaredy Cat gasp behind me. He wasn't the only one either. Death was part of an adventurer's life, but a civilian's death proven to be a dungeon-related incident was something adventurers universally abhorred because this was seen by the general public as a collective failure for all adventurers. And, while Divah was among an outlier of adventurers who shared the belief that saving lives was also part of our duty, most adventurers' reasons for helping civilians weren't as altruistic. Public sentiment mattered greatly to them as it was the stick by which we measured one of an adventurer's primary motivations—fame.

"The men who committed the murders were proven through physical and mental examination to be accursed," Mistress Lorelai explained further.

According to Divah's guide, an accursed was a title given to a mortal who possessed a body saturated with a dungeon's miasma which greatly altered their mental state while sometimes affecting their physical forms too, like how legends claimed that the first vampire was an accursed afflicted by the taint of gluttony.

"Yes"—Mistress Lorelai was nodding to the uncertain faces gazing back at her—"they were like Aine's father, who until his drastic change, was a man who doted on his child..."

"We'll save him!" Dess yelled passionately. "We'll save them all!"

Hers was the first of the rousing calls to action that popped up in response to Mistress Lorelai's reveal.

"In their investigation, LEPRCON agents have found large traces of miasma growing within Kells Falls, thickest in the homes of those who have been cursed." Mistress Lorelai raised her fist high. "The miasma is proof that Aine was right. That this tragedy did not come to pass solely through human depravity—they're all under the influence of the vargr festering inside this dungeon!"

All our gazes snapped toward the large stone doors with their depictions of monstrous faces and tentacle appendages.

"For a child such as Aine, surrendering would have been normal... She's in pain. She's terrified..." Lorelai's voice was filled with passion now. "And yet she has not abandoned hope! She believes we can save her father!"

Here's where I imagined an upbeat musical score would begin playing. Perhaps something like 'Queen's, We Will Rock You,' or 'Journey's, don't stop believing.' Yes, I have been influenced by Divah's love of human songs from the seventies and eighties. They're groovy tracks.

"Will we answer Aine's call, adventurers?" Lorelai swung her spear's tip to fan toward us. "Shall we hunt the monsters hiding beyond these doors?!"

The roar that followed was deafening. There wasn't a single one of us who didn't have our hands raised. Even me. We were all caught up in this inspiring moment.

***

Lorelai's pregame pump-up speech was still fresh in my mind an hour later. It was why I felt such pride in my chest when I brandished my glaive against the creature glaring at me from within the boundary of the encroaching miasma.

"Can't you act a little scared?" I frowned. "I've got this enchanted blade pointed at you, pal…"

I swung my glaive left and then right for added effect, but the long-eared, brown-skinned, hobbit-like creature failed to express the proper emotion for my threat of death. There was no fear in its glittering red eyes. Only grimy, sharp-nailed fingers twitching in my direction.

"Um, Will," Scaredy Cat called. "I think they're about to attack us..."

I shot a glance over my shoulder and noticed how the other members of Team Six were all staring down monsters of their own. Yep, we were surrounded.

Whose fault was this, you ask? Well, either Lohgan or Brunhilde, the idiots who'd argued with each other once we arrived on the second floor, making us pull them apart and leaving Team Six further behind in the raid group's march. I imagined this was partly Mistress Lorelai's fault too for sticking us with rearguard and supply team duty when we were just a ragtag bunch with little experience working together.

"Incoming!" Morph yelled. Although his yell sounded more like a squeak compared to the awful cry coming from beyond the gloom.

When the creature finally leaped out of the miasma—its mouth set in an almost gleeful, childlike smile marred by dripping saliva—a useless thought ran through my mind; 'Baldr's balls, how did these little nobodies get past the frontline, anyway?'