“I knew you were serious, but you’re this serious?” Becky asked, looking at the strange eyeglasses in her hands. “Why didn’t you have us trainin’ with these before the run?” The Druid held the spectacles up, squinting to see through the foggy lenses.

  “We’ve been dreading this part of the run,” Chisel added. “You made it sound like we had no choice but to take the mind games on the chin and gut through it.”

  “I’m feeling sick to my stomach even now,” Terry said, inspecting his own pair of spectacles.

  Honronk and Buru seemed to agree with the others but didn’t verbalize it.

  Yotuli stood tall and strong, her hand around the wooden Gomi charm on her necklace, the symbol she had chosen to represent her faith in the spirit of bastards and wanderers. She was far more stoic than others, which had become the Apprentice Cleric’s new normal. She spent more and more time meditating on Daojmot, and that practice made her far quieter and more reserved than she was as Yotuli the Apprentice Ranger.

  Hans looked around the cave, studying the faces of each adventurer standing amongst the corpses of cave crawlers.

  The shelled bodies of the crab-like monsters were smashed and pierced, blue blood still dripping to the rocky floor. When the adventurers came back through this section to exit, they would harvest the smaller of their two claws, the ukulele-sized claw and not the guitar-sized claw. Even now, the larger claw looked disproportionately big next to their bodies, which were only slightly larger in surface area than a targes–one of the round shields Hans insisted his students train with.

  At first, the adventurers struggled to adapt to the unique ability of cave crawlers. Crabs on a beach could sink into sand to hide, descending without digging, lowering themselves with only a slight wiggle. Cave crawlers did the same, but with solid stone, making them especially adept at ambushing prey from every angle that their underground homes allowed–from below, from the side, and from overhead.

  The monsters could exit stone quickly to launch their attack, but the return trip was much slower. If their attacks were arrows from a longbow, their retreats were like reloading a crossbow, ultimately effective but slow and arduous.

  Honronk was particularly frustrated by that last observation. He cast Charm on a cave crawler, intending to use it to deliver a surprise attack to the monsters of the next encounter, but his magically tamed monster got snipped by a former ally before it could disappear completely into the cover of solid stone.

  The enemies beyond the stone temple door at Hans’ back were much different from cave crawlers. Lamiae lived within the temple. Each had the torso of a beautiful woman, their bodies and features as varied as the humans in the kingdom they threatened. Beneath their naked upper-half was the body of a snake. The snake portions were as wide as human hips–were the lamia completely human–and the alluring monsters used their snake bodies to stand upright, like a cobra poised to strike.

  “I didn’t tell you about the glasses because I wanted you to fully appreciate the real threat a lamia poses,” Hans explained. “If that sounds cruel, it was for your own good. Their ability to take on the appearance of your perfect lover is just as horrifying as I described. Managing your own emotions in a fight like this is a crucial adventuring skill because of the monsters who engage in this kind of warfare, lamia are relatively benign. It gets worse. So much worse.”

  “So we make ourselves half-blind instead?” Becky asked, now wearing her glasses. The lenses had the same diameter and thickness as one of the bottles the Tribe used for individual beers.

  Hans said that Becky was correct. “It is perfectly possible to defeat a lamia without these glasses, and frankly, that’s how most adventurers do it. No matter how much I tell you that this ability is incredibly dangerous, a little part of your mind believes that you’re mentally strong enough to handle it just fine, that putting a sword through the image of an ideal mate is something you could do without difficulty.”

  Many of the heads nodded, reluctantly. Only Becky and Yotuli remained still.

  “Do you have glasses, Mr. Hans?” Honronk asked.

  The Guild Master shook his head. He had, unfortunately, fought lamiae the hard way and developed a mental resistance to their Illusion magic. Ultimately, the monsters used a person’s own thoughts to craft the haunting visage of a person so perfect that they could never exist. Like telepathy and mind reading, it was possible to close and guard those doors to your mind.

  “These glasses sacrifice visual clarity to preserve mental clarity, but you should still steel yourselves. You’ll see your enemies, and glasses can break. My hope, though, is that they help you build mental fortitude by tempering you with more controlled exposure to these kinds of attacks.”

  After reassuring them that he would be present to help, he instructed the adventurers to equip their blurry spectacles and to set their formation to enter the temple. Six lamiae waited inside. Three they would likely fight individually. The last three would be in the temple chamber, two lamiae and one lamia matron–the leader, an older, more powerful lamia.

  “Let me say this now to be completely clear: You should not willingly look at a lamia without your glasses. Many of you are already feeling that temptation. Resist it. Trust me.”

  The entrance to the temple was a double door carved from stone with intricate knotting patterns etched throughout, like dozens of infinitely long snakes tangled with one another. The interior had more of the same artistry, from the corridors to the main temple hall where the lamiae delivered their worship and communed with beings from any of several twisted and dark planes.

  The three battles with individual lamiae ended quickly. The monsters put too much faith in their Illusion magic. Like it was with the squonks, by the time they recognized their attack was ineffective, adventurers were on them with swords, arrows, spells, and an opposum.

  Hans observed from the back, as he typically did in these early runs. He still saw the naked torso of a beautiful woman, but where others would see a soft face with mesmerizingly beautiful eyes, he saw the twisted visage of a snake-human hybrid. Her eyes were narrow slits. She had a long tongue, and she had fangs to accompany her mouth full of pointed teeth.

  Soon, the party burst into the primary chamber, a room twice as large as the shaman room from the Bone Goblins. Two sets of pillars ran parallel down the sides of the room, framing a marble altar at the far end. Between the main door and that altar, in the middle of the room, was a round pit filled with humanoid skulls. Its depth was unclear, but the visible number of skulls suggested at least a hundred or so victims had fallen to the coven.

  The matron stayed at the back of the room as the other two lamiae stood to face the adventurers, blocking the paths to either side of the pit. Those two monsters summoned a water elemental roughly the same size as Buru. They sent the summons forward to impede the adventurers while they hurled a variety of magic attacks from a safe distance–fireballs and meteors mostly.

  Buru cast Herd Instinct, a Druid spell that buffed the entire party’s awareness. Instead of providing the physical enhancement of Yotuli’s Inspiration, Herd Instinct networked the group’s senses. The spell stopped well short of telepathy or mind sharing, but their knowledge of where their allies and enemies were expanded. Without looking, one adventurer could know that they had an ally on the other side of the room. If that ally was aware of enemies near them, so was the rest of the party.

  Honronk cast Lesser Ice to slow the water elementals, and Chisel attempted to use Lesser Sleep to incapacitate the lamiae. They resisted, easily, responding with a volley of Lesser Ice spells of their own, sharp hunks of frozen water hurled like spears at the adventurers.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Terry targeted the frozen shoulder of a water elemental, cleaving it from the beast. The monster didn’t have a voice to express pain, but it physically recoiled from the attack. As Terry went after his next frozen target, he missed a block and an arm of water hit him in the head, knocking him off his feet.

  The Apprentice recovered quickly, scrambling back to his feet with his shield up. His glasses were no longer on his face.

  He gazed at the lamia closest to him, the one behind the water elemental who battered him, and stopped moving. He was stunned, overwhelmed by the vision of perfection–his idea of perfection.

  Honronk cast Prism in front of Terry, reversing the usual position of the spell. Where the adventurers used the one-way light show to obscure their attacks behind a curtain of bright color, he placed the spell so it was Terry who could no longer see his enemy.

  “Get your glasses, Terry!” Becky yelled. She cast Quills, sending a flurry of porcupine quills at the lamia nearest to Terry, keeping her on her heels while the Apprentice was disoriented.

  The break in his line of sight helped him to collect himself. He recovered his glasses while Chisel delayed the water elemental with a Slow spell, turning its quickly churning body of water into a sort of creeping molasses.

  “Bless these bastards so that they may wander another day!” Yotuli shouted, invigorating her party with her Inspiration spell.

  “Cover!” Becky yelled, spotting a growing ball of red lightning in the matron’s hands. The elder lamia slithered to the side suddenly, weaving out of the way of a blurry white ball of fur. The lightning fizzled to nothing as the matron cast Barrier to escape a sudden swarm of bees.

  When Chisel cast Slow on the other water elemental, Becky, Yotuli, and Terry ran down the two lamiae disciples while Buru and Becky sent Flying Vines at both in rapid succession. The lamiae couldn’t defend against vines and weapons simultaneously. As soon as they fell, the water elementals splashed to the floor, what used to be their bodies draining slowly between the cracks in the stone pavers.

  The matron hurled smaller balls of red lightning now, choosing speed over strength. Honronk cast Nightsight on the matron, and then used Summon Light to place a bright orb in front of the lamia. She recoiled, covering her eyes. In the moments it took her to regain her sight, Honronk cast Duplicate on Becky.

  Four Beckys charged at the matron, axes raised. The matron hurled lightning at the duplicates, trying to find the actual Becky.

  The matron fell to the real axe soon after.

  Following their training, the party swept the room for other threats to be certain all enemies were eliminated. They were.

  Terry doubled over, his hands on his knees. “Holy shit,” he gasped. “Honronk, buddy, damn am I glad you’re a quick thinker.”

  Honronk nodded but said nothing else.

  “Everyone whole?” Becky asked, removing her spectacles to inspect each party member in turn for injuries. She found none. “Phew. That was a wild one. Well done, everyone.”

  The dwarf Druid looked around again, taking in the room.

  She stiffened. “Where’s Hans?”

  After a brief search, they found Hans outside in the hallway, curled up, hugging his knees.

  “Hans?” Becky asked, gently reaching for the distraught Guild Master.

  Without lifting his head, he said, “I fucked up.”

  While the Apprentices collected lamia scales, a process akin to descaling a fish, Becky sat with Hans as his fugue faded.

  “You good, boss?” Becky asked when he finally lifted his head.

  “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  “What’d we miss?”

  Hans sighed. “You missed me overestimating myself. It occurs to me now that I haven’t fought a matron since this job. Other lamiae? Plenty of those.”

  “But they ain’t as strong as matrons,” Becky offered.

  “No, no they aren’t.”

  “Well, she’s dead now. Sorry we had to kill your perfect woman.”

  The Guild Master forced a chuckle.

  By the time the Apprentices collected the lamia scales from the five dead monsters, Hans had recovered. They explored the rest of the temple, finding a set of prison cells and a laboratory of sorts. The cells were empty. The books in the laboratory were blank, but a garden smaller than the one in Luther Land brimmed with a variety of reagents.

  In the corner of the room was a large wooden box. Hans didn’t recall seeing such a box in the original job. When he voiced that confusion, something in the box began to screech and pound violently against the sides.

  “What the hell is that?” Becky asked.

  Hans put his face in his hands. His encounter with the lamia matron had drained him of any patience he once had.

  Terry kicked the wooden side panel. The monster within erupted in anger again. “This here is a goblin in a box.”

  A few nights before they added the lamiae section, Hans drank around a fire with a few of the Apprentices. Terry talked about how much he loved the goblin in a box prank. He said it was one of the best pranks he had ever seen, and he wished the dungeon was safe enough for more lighthearted moments like that. Hans agreed, but thought nothing of it.

  And now, there was a goblin in a box in the corner of a lamiae temple.

  I can’t think about this right now.

  The Guild Master told the Apprentices to eliminate the goblin. When they said they weren’t sure how, he gruffly told them to figure it out and get it done. After a few downward thrusts, Terry’s sword broke through the box and silenced the goblin inside.

  Meanwhile, Becky collected the reagents for Olza to formally identify on the surface. She recognized ghost reed, mandrake root, two varieties of nightshade, and what appeared to be the early growths of a tomato plant.

  Having started this run at the dungeon core, Hans’ suggestion to recreate the lamia coven job reset the dungeon as it always did, but Hans included two new structural suggestions as well. The adventurers confirmed the appearance of a non-functioning drawbridge almost immediately after the reset. The ruins of a gatehouse led to the Luther Land access corridor, the transition between familiar dungeon hallway and the crumbling granite of the new structure stark and abrupt.

  The chasm was deep enough that the light of a dropped torch descended until it was too far from the adventurers for its light to overcome the darkness. The pit seemed bottomless even though that was a physical impossibility, technically. Beyond a certain distance, gravity won automatically. That quibble with describing its depth wouldn’t matter to anything that fell into the gap.

  The drawbridge opened outward from Luther Land. When the lifting mechanisms were repaired, the dungeon residents could raise their new bridge, leaving a void between them and any monsters that might wish to explore the strange tusk town.

  The same ruined drawbridge appeared between the dungeon entrance and the Poop Puddle. The chasm in this part of the dungeon cut into the early parts of that section. Now, water from the swamp endlessly poured over the edge and into the moat of air. Once that bridge could be raised, they could put a bottomless pit between the surface and the rest of the dungeon. Nearly all of it, that is.

  Hans had debated the location of this particular drawbridge for some time in his mind. Placing it at the entrance would have cut the entire dungeon off from the overworld, but Hans opted for the Forgeborne Mines to still be accessible when the drawbridge was up. He reasoned that elementals were least likely to find their way to the surface, and that the relative safety of the mines could be useful.

  If Gomi ever needed to, they could retreat into the dungeon to escape a threat on the surface. That was unlikely, but Hans’ obsession with being overprepared made that choice feel important, whether or not it actually was he couldn’t say.

  On the way out of the dungeon, Hans did his best to behave normally, but his efforts were strained. He retreated to his cabin as soon as he saw daylight.

  Quest Update: Fix the two broken drawbridges.

  Open Quests (Ordered from Old to New):

  Progress from Gold-ranked to Diamond-ranked.

  Mend the rift with Devon.

  Complete the next volume (Iron to Bronze) for "The Next Generation: A Teaching Methodology for Training Adventurers."

  Visit the locations of old Diamond quests with Becky.

  Explore the idea of training “dungeon lifeguards” to accompany adventurers in training.

  Await the arrival of a safe for the Gomi chapter.

  Complete construction of the Takarabune (still need diamond, scarlet steel, celestial steel, and mimic blood).

  Fix the two broken drawbridges.