The Survivor Becomes a Dungeon

Isaak POV

The hairs against the back of his neck began to rise. Something in the air was warning him that the situation was about to turn nasty. Holding up the torch, he tried to illuminate the rest of the dark cavern before him. The orange flame was dancing against the walls when he caught movement from the corner of his eye, along with another clattering sound. Wheeling around to turn the torch to the source of the sound, he was met with the reflective gaze of a rat who sniffed in his general direction before scampering off.

"So, mister guard…" The amused-sounding voice of Trisha sounds out from behind him as she stepped closer and peered over his shoulder. "Are you going to defend us from that mighty-looking rat?" She couldn't help but chuckle softly as she patted his shoulder before stepping past him and holding up the tiny flame in her palm to light the path forward.

Isaak couldn't help but sigh and roll his eyes. "Hey, we have no idea what's down here, not to mention this mountain is the home to a Dungeon core. Who knows what's lurking within here." He warned warily, now wishing he had at least some form of armor. "Also, please stay behind me. If anything does happen, I'll probably be better equipped to handle it."

Trisha just shrugged in response, looking around the open area of space in this cave before finding a path off to the right and gesturing to it. "Alright, then, lead us down that way." She suggested.

Turning to look, he hummed in consideration before simply nodding. "Sure, alright." He agreed as he overtook her again and made his way forward. Peering through the passageway, it seemed just wide enough for them to walk through if they walked side by side.

Though he didn't seem to notice that the floors were more often flat looking and occasionally smooth as they proceeded further and deeper into the cave.

"Seems a little empty to be considered a Dungeon…" Trisha murmured aloud.

Casting a glance back at her, Isaak couldn't help but agree. But for whatever reason, that made the sinking feeling in his gut grow even more. "Yeah, no kidding; maybe he just doesn't see the need to attack us?" Isaak offered as a reason, seemingly trying to convince himself more than anything, as he heard another clatter of stones. 'Geez, must be another rat.' He considered, just focusing on the path before him as they took a right turn. "Say, have you even found any mining spots?" He remembered to ask as he glanced back at Trisha.

Trisha, in turn, was running her hand against another wall as she squinted at some of the cracks. "Actually, yeah, there are a few spots around here." She mentioned as she turned to look at Isaak, who looked back at her, almost annoyed.

He sighed softly, his nerves seeming to get the better of him. "If you found what you were looking for, why didn't you say anything?"

At that, Trisha just responded with a shrug. "Well, I wanted to find more; I wanted to know if maybe there was anything worthwhile."

Forcing himself to remain in the moment, he ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head a little. "I'm getting a bad feeling about all this. Let's acknowledge the ones you found and come back later with more people. I don't want to be this far from camp when it gets dark, especially considering the sun was in the latter half of the sky when we left."

Trisha couldn't find an argument against that as she relented. "Fair enough, not to mention we should probably fashion a lot more torches to try and illuminate some of the paths and chambers." She considered, noting how much carving she's got in her near future.

Nodding with some vague sense of relief, Isaak stepped past her again and started heading down the path they walked. Taking a left, he suddenly stops as he is faced with a skeleton. "Whoa, oh shit." He stepped back, resting his hand against the grip of his blade.

"Oh, cool, a skeleton." Trisha enthused as she peeked around the corner to see what had freaked Isaak out. "Maybe this is one of Vitmori's… Doesn't he use a mix of undead and beasts?" She offered from what the Shepherd told them.

At that, Isaak started to relax. "Yeah, maybe he's just checking to see what we're doing down here." He reasoned as he watched Trisha approach the skeleton with a smile.

"Sorry if we're troubling you, Vitmori; we were just looking for some ores and minerals to use back at the Haven." She explained apologetically.

At this, the creaking skeleton tilts its head. The purple gleam in its eye is staring at Trisha before it grabs her shoulders.

"Whoa, hey now, aren't you being a little too forward?" She joked but suddenly felt anxious as its grip tightened. "H-hey, stop that; it hurts!" She cried out as she started to try to squirm away.

Suddenly realizing something was wrong, Isaak rushed forward, pulling his blade from his hip but not drawing it as he quickly struck the pommel against the skeleton's skull. Shattering the braincase as the skeleton crumpled in a heap of bones.

Isaak glanced back at Trisha, who was holding her left shoulder with a strained expression on her face. "We should get out of here." He said firmly as he kicked away some of the bones.

"Y-yeah… Okay.." Trisha said softly as she watched the bones with a deserved wariness before stepping forward after Isaak as he retook the lead.

As they returned to the last open cavern they were just in, he heard the unmistakable creaking of even more skeletons as he swung his torch around, trying to light more of his field of view. To his horror, there were more of them and not just humanoid shapes. The amalgamation of corpses and bodies seemingly pieced together randomly as they began clattering and crawling towards him and Trisha. "Run!" He cried out, grabbing Trisha's wrist as he pulled her hard and started running back the way they came.

There were more and more skeletons, but littered among them were old and desiccated undead groaning out as they shuffled forward. Two, in particular, were already blocking the way to the following path, which would lead them to the first cavern they entered.

Gritting his teeth, Isaak bellowed out a warcry as he shoulder-charged the first undead, pushing Trisha past the other before drawing his blade with his now free hand.

The undead that wasn't hit was now reeling back to strike, its movement easy to read and telegraphed as Isaak sidestepped before slashing out with a downward swing of his sword. The thoroughly sharpened blade cleaving through the undead's rotten shoulder and chest, cutting the undead down with ease. Now turning on his heel and rushing down the path again as Trisha stayed as close as possible.

Soon enough, they reached the first open cavern and were able to run through it with no opposition. Then came the main path all the way out to the mouth of the cave as they finally reached the surface. The cool evening air rushed to greet them as the duo panted hotly while trying to catch their breath.

Isaak eyed the mouth of the cave warily before glancing back over to Trisha. "We need to warn the Shepherd. Vitmori almost killed us."

Trisha was shivering with fear, her shoulder aching as she tried not to consider how close they were to dying. "Yeah… L-lets go." She said softly, swallowing hard as the two of them moved to get some distance between them and that cave.