Scholarly Entry #H09-561-Rt7:

  The First Layer

  Dungeons exist. This should not be controversial. Dungeons, like indigestion and mysterious stains on pub ceilings, simply are. Now, while it is technically possible for a dungeon to appear outside of the Underfold—say, behind your aunt’s greenhouse or in that dodgy bit of the city where maps develop nosebleeds—it’s not until you trip over your own feet and fall screaming into the First Layer that things begin to get properly dungeony.

  The so-called Tutorial ends the moment you leave your old world behind.

  Now, some believe that dungeon-delving is a neat, straight road: you start at the shallow end and paddle bravely toward greater horrors. These people are known as corpses. Some ‘Tutorial’ levels have been known to drop in ancient apocalyptic terrors with the same confident randomness as a chef who believes all food can be improved with a handful of chili flakes. Others are so oddly polite that the only real danger is existential dread.

  Endless discussions have been held about which type is worse.

  For while a pleasant stroll through a well-groomed garden–picking up a training sword here, whacking a dummy there–might seem nice at a first glance, upwards of 80% of Delvers who experience the infamous ‘Garden Tutorial’—bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and horribly underprepared—immediately find themselves demoted to the spiritual afterlife as soon as they enter their first real Dungeon.

  Much like the Tutorial, the First Layer is not a standardised experience.

  The System, despite its grandiose name, operates on principles only slightly more coherent than a cheese dream after midnight. There is no grand design (at least not that we know of). Some Delvers claw their way through lesser dungeon after lesser dungeon like they’re unwrapping a particularly resentful onion in search for the way down. Others trip over their own boots and fall straight into the Third Layer by accident, skipping the First and Second entirely.

  By the time they reach the Fourth Layer, some Delvers do it with power enough to light up the sky—and others make their entrance with nothing more than a rusty spoon and a misplaced sense of confidence. And yet, they all learn the same lesson:

  The System is nothing if not... egalitarian in its cruelty.

  ***

  Unsteady waves bobbed Annabell up and down in the sort of manner usually reserved for rubber ducks and unfortunate corks at sea. The water, black and briny and possessed of a mean-spirited sense of humour, spun her in slow, indecisive circles, presumably so she wouldn’t miss the scenery. The scenery being: fog, darkness, and the faint impression that something out there had far too many teeth.

  “Well, Wallace,” she said, spitting salt and optimism in roughly equal measure, “we’ve really made a hash of it this time, haven’t we? I did just eat, you know. You're not supposed to swim after eating. Or before. Or during. Really, swimming is best left to fish and the tragically buoyant.”

  The ocean responded with another helpful splash directly to the goggles, which had fogged up ages ago and were now serving mostly as a way to trap salt in her eyelashes.

  Around her, the horizon had gone on strike, replaced by a shifty fog lit blood-red by a moon that was clearly up to something. It was the kind of moon that you wouldn’t trust with your secrets. Or your goats.

  There was also the distinct and unsettling sensation that she was not alone in the water.

  If this were a movie, violins would be playing. Slow, creeping, doom-anticipating violins. But this was not a movie, and the current soundtrack of Annabell’s life mostly involved nervous splashing and a failed attempt at confidence.

  “How do you figure we’ll get out of this one?” she asked with a quiet, unsteady chuckle. One which quickly turned into a nervous shriek as something large, cold, and slimy brushed against her delectable kneecaps.

  With the ancient instinct of snails, turtles, and crustaceans with social anxiety, she retracted into herself, arms thrashing wildly and whipping up the ocean around her into a briny foam.

  Gremlins were creatures of land, mischief, and madcap aerobatics—not open water.

  Certainly not water that was touching her with intent.

  Instead of an apology, or even a friendly, “Oh, terribly sorry, didn’t mean to consider you for consumption,” from whatever was considering snacking on her legs, what came next was a rumbling horn blast.

  It echoed across the water with the sonorous toot of all things large and official.

  Next to her, a massive tail split the surface before vanishing into the dark, leaving behind only the wet slap of distant oars, and a chorus of creaks from a boat that had clearly seen better centuries.

  Soon after, voices drifted through the mist.

  Along came a pale lantern, swinging lazily from the bow of the approaching vessel, casting just enough light to make things more ominous. Then, one of the voices, rasping across the waves like a tithe collector with bronchitis, gave way for words:

  “There really was another one of you, aye?”

  Wrapped in the haunted air of someone who’d rowed across too many rivers, some metaphorical, a figure stood at the oar of the approaching dinghy, looking like it had once auditioned to be alive but didn’t quite get the part.

  “This yer companion?”

  “Afraid so,” came the reply, drier than the average desert and about twice as tired.

  The speaker, as it turned out, was far more familiar and treacherous looking. It was the guy who had kicked her out of bed, interrupted her meal, and pushed her into a bottomless puddle with a concrete anchor.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  His dark hair was plastered back by seawater and hubris, and his jacket glistened with damp in the lantern light. Yet somehow, despite looking like he’d just wrestled a kraken and lost in five out of six categories, he still managed to extend a hand with effortless nonchalance.

  Annabell stared at the offered hand, hesitated for a second, then took it with all the dignity of a soggy raccoon.

  “You get a boat?” she huffed, hauling, wiggling, and kicking herself aboard with the grace of a walrus. “You push me into this nightmare, and you get a boat. What happened to karma? Is this some special kind of cosmic favouritism for people with cheekbones?”

  She glanced at the oarsman with a soggy glare. “And you even got the full cryptic-horror escort service deluxe? Unbelievable.”

  The oarsman met her gaze, unwavering and unamused.

  Hollow eyes, as if he had been born tired, died exhausted, and then been brought back on a zero-sleep contract, stared into hers. Wisps of hair floated before his face like cobwebs in mourning, held down by a wide-brimmed hat, and his skin had the texture of old parchment left out in the rain and then regrettably ironed. The coat he wore might once have been part of a naval uniform before the sea got ideas and started redesigning it.

  “She said you would come,” he wheezed, curling back over the oar like a man deeply in debt to fate and paying it off one row at a time. “And came you did. I’m merely here to make sure you don’t end up a starter course for the Deep Ones before you’ve served your purpose.”

  Having just plopped down to a soggy squelch, her treacherous companion—a title for once not held by Wallace—beat Annabell to the punch of asking a reasonable follow-up question.

  “She? Who is she?”

  It wasn’t the question Annabell would’ve chosen. She was leaning more toward “Deep Ones? Like, how deep?” and “Is the water meant to stare like that?”

  But the oarsman had already jabbed his chin at the fog, which still clung to the world like a bloodthirsty veil.

  “Who knows?” the oarsman grumbled, as if the words were being clawed up from the seabed. “Many have asked. More have died trying to answer. The mist and the sea whisper all sorts of things, but only She won’t lead you astray.”

  As her know-it-all companion furrowed his brow, Annabell could only nod along with exaggerated smugness. He didn’t even understand that much? Guess he wasn’t such a smarty-pants, after all.

  “Of course,” she agreed, nose pointed high. “You’ve got to be very careful with her voice. Sometimes she’ll guide you to that cookie you knew fell behind the bed last week. Other times, she’ll tell you the noodles that expired last year are fine. They never are.”

  Ignoring the groan from the young man behind her, the oarsman spoke up in agreement:

  “Aye,” he said, dipping the oars again, “hang on to that kind of wisdom, lass. Most who end up here in Ashenmoor think the whispers are just air in the ears. But their call’s like the sea: soft at first, then all at once. No joy follows once they’ve got you. Just the sinking.”

  As if to underline his point, a chill breeze swept through, tugging at his white hair and the brim of his hat. The fog shivered.

  And then came the sound.

  A low, spectral wail threaded through the mist, dragging shivers up the spine like unpaid debts. It was followed by the solemn, distant toll of a church bell.

  Ashenmoor was calling for them.

  ***

  Massaging his temples like they had personally let him down—a gesture familiar to all those who have ever attempted to herd cats or negotiate with toddlers—Lionel found himself at the bow of the dinghy where he sat, head in hands.

  A dinghy that was currently being rocked ever so slightly by the movements of its most vibrant occupant. The Pink Menace, as Lionel had taken to calling her in the safe, echo-free corridors of his mind, was hanging over the side and making faces at the water.

  Not into the water. At it. As if it had started something.

  For a good ten minutes, she had been engaged in what could generously be described as psychological warfare against her own reflection. The reflection, to its credit, had endured this admirably—until it suddenly sprouted a double row of teeth and attempted to liberate her nose from her face.

  Whatever shot out of the water, it was slimy and frenzied, and it was gone just as quickly.

  “Nothing to worry about,” the oarsman assured as the scaly creature dipped beneath the waves once more. “‘twas just a curious Deep One.”

  Despite the reassurance, the Pink Menace relocated to the exact centre of the dinghy shortly after, adopting the pose of someone determined to never trust a puddle again.

  Unfortunately, this new state of caution barely lasted long enough for Lionel to gather his thoughts–a hundred questions and concerns vying for his attention.

  Then she was off again: tapping out a squelching rhythm against the floor as she launched into a soliloquy about how “the voices” once convinced her to order an extra-extra-large pizza because there’d been a 5% discount.

  “Even though,” she said, with the mournful authority of a weathered general recalling a failed siege, “the extra-large would’ve been perfect. But noooo. The discount was cosmic destiny. Or so the voices insisted. And the voices can be very convincing. So, it’s not really my fault, is it?”

  Over the coming minutes—through a dazzling feat of mental acrobatics that would have left even philosophers cross-eyed—the Pink Menace managed to imply, quite convincingly, that the universe itself was to blame for her eating enough food to sustain a family of five through a particularly generous winter.

  The pizza, she claimed, had seduced her. The discount had lied. The stomach cramps had been betrayals. At no point did she seem to consider that her actions were something that she might be responsible for.

  This—among other increasingly unhelpful things, like humming a medley of incoherent songs or constantly rocking the boat with her fretting—meant that Lionel had no room to do what any self-respecting Dungeon explorer ought to do when dropped into a hostile, damp, and almost certainly cursed environment: ask questions.

  Questions like: “What kind of scenario is this?”, “Are we meant to survive it?”, and “Where’s the arrow pointing towards the nearest exit?”

  By all means, in a properly conducted Dungeon run, these things would preferably have been handed to him on a laminated sheet, possibly accompanied by a presentation.

  The whole business of plunging into the Unknown was a relic of the past. Dungeon scenarios were supposed to be negotiated. There were menus. You could pick one. The Unknown was a marketing term, designed to convince the audience that authenticity was still alive.

  Yet here he was, trapped in a rocking dinghy upon a dark sea, slowly being rowed towards just that.

  Really, what kind of nonsense situation was this?

  The System, normally a slick, occasionally smug assistant, maintained its unresponsiveness.

  And worst of all, his only companion in this entire charade was a girl who had, as of this moment, busied herself composing an impromptu sea shanty about soggy socks, pausing only to ask–for a fifth time–“Are we there yet?”

  In short, he was completely and utterly alone in figuring this headache out.

  A forced descent, an unresponsive System, dropped into an open sea with a trailing, obtuse scenario introduction.

  In some ten days, the 248th Season would begin. A season even the System itself was said to be paying attention to…

  The timing. The urgency. The strange introduction.

  With a frown, Lionel aimed a swift, calculated kick at the bottom of the Pink Menace’s seat.

  There was a satisfying thunk, a startled squeak, and—for once—silence.

  Before she could retaliate with either violence or offence, he turned to the oarsman, “We’re not the first ones here, are we?” he asked. “This scenario… it’s already running.”

  The oarsman’s grin spread like damp mould, revealing wooden dentures and blackened gums. “Aye,” he rasped. “Many Delvers have come through this place over the years. Brave souls. Foolish souls. But the mist… aye, the mist devours all. Doesn’t even leave a receipt.”

  In the distance, that haunting church bell chimed once more.

  The oarsman chuckled.

  “Seems another one has seen too much. Soon, she’ll need replacements…”