“You think it’s going to be worth it?” Phelan Connor asked.

  His companion merely shrugged. Cedar Helwi had done his due diligence. The place the two were aiming for was barely documented, old, and forgotten by age. Yet it had all the right requirements for a Dungeon: Old halls carved into a mountainside as a defensive position several hundred years ago. A battle between local nobles, the fall of one house.

  After all, that’s what he’d promised to his blood brother’s son. So he just slapped his shoulder.

  “Trust me. It is usually worth it.”

  “Thanks for bringing me in,” Phelan replied.

  “Least I can do for you.”

  “After dad had the stroke, and everything stopped…”

  “I owe most of everything I am to your father. Mariek took me in when the Dukes’ War raged and taught me how to survive in troubled times. And when he returned home and found you were there, I was there to drink him silly. Remember those times?”

  “He probably wishes I didn’t do the adventurer thing.”

  “Do you really have what it takes to hold the forge together?”

  Phelan hesitated, and Cedar sighed.

  “You would know it if you do. If you don’t, you won’t. That’s why I'm teaching you an alternative, just like your father once taught me. You can tide over things until you find your way. Maybe you’re not a smith.”

  “My father became a smith.”

  “After the War. Before, he used weapons; now, he makes them. The forge was… is your father’s business, not yours. Not unless you want to follow that path.”

  “Or become an adventurer.”

  “Or anything. I mean, I am a good adventurer. That, I learned after the War, too.”

  Phelan focused again on the path, climbing the twisty and narrow pathway the two had followed for the best part of the day.

  “Are we there yet?”

  Cedar moved to cuff his head, and the youngster dodged easily, pulling out his tongue.

  “I owe your father a lot, but beware, boy.”

  He looked up and spotted something. He pointed out.

  “See up there?”

  Phelan squinted and saw what looked like stacks of stones.

  “Ruins?”

  “That’s got to be it, then. So, yes, we are there yet,” Cedar laughed.

  A few switchbacks, and he found moss-covered stones, making bits of a wall. He had to look around, but behind the walls, there were a few thorn-covered piles that could be more bits of the ruins.

  “Not impressive,” Phelan noted.

  “If you expect being an adventurer means you visit the King’s summer castle, you’ll be disappointed. People call us grave robbers for a reason. We go where no one lives anymore.”

  “But it can be lucrative.”

  Cedar looked at the youngster. Mariek’s son needed money. Or take over the business, now that Cedar’s old friend could no longer lift the hammer and barely move around.

  Dying in battle was more glorious than the long death that was promised to his former mentor. But then, inglorious death in the Dukes’ war would have made Phelan a total orphan.

  “Not every single time, but often, yes. Kingdoms rise and fall, fiefs rise and fall, and when the tide goes away, we get to find out what they left.”

  “And this was related to the old Duke’s family?”

  “More like a rival of a cadet Viscount branch. I found that in old archives in Yarak. A branch of the now-dead Duke’s family went against a rival house, and this was one of their fortresses. This time, the house of Yarak won.”

  “And we can find treasure in there? I think I would have ransacked the fortress if I had won.”

  “Phelan, nothing is sure in this business. But if the fortress is now a Dungeon, then there are things that were worthless back then that will be worth it today.”

  Dungeons, those locations of the world that were overloaded by meaning, by mana, by history and fate; those places were the source of real wealth.

  In any other ruins, abandoned items would decay, rust, and fall apart. In a true Dungeon, abandoned items gathered meaning. A simple sword would become an extraordinary sword. A mastercraft item became a unique one, a legendary one.

  And you could find Souls.

  The outskirts of the fortress were well decayed, on their way to become undistinguishable from the wilderness. But Phelan did spot a dark opening.

  “The archives say the fortress was half troglodytic. They built it into the mountain for additional protection, during winter notably. And now, that’s when the prepared adventurer comes to the fore.”

  Phelan watched as Cedar pulled a pair of brass lanterns from his backpack, along with a jar of oil.

  “I would have thought…”

  “Torches? Like some clueless savage? Believe me, lanterns are way better. They last longer, don’t smoke as much, and don’t burn you. We’re not magicians, so lantern we go.”

  Once lit, the lantern cast a decent light over the opening. Cedar handed it to Phelan, then started his own before taking point. As he’d hoped, the dark opening wasn’t just some small cave but immediately turned into a hallway, carved and reinforced stone, and smoothed pavement.

  He held his hand up and pointed upward.

  “See this, Phelan?”

  There was a set of holes in the smooth ceiling.

  “Murder holes. The defenders would be killing you from above if you came that way.”

  “A trap?”

  “No trap. You’d get traps into Tomb Dungeons. This was a fortress where people live, and no one wants to have automated traps everywhere where you walk around drunk after some feast.”

  The entrance tunnel opened into a hall with a ceiling not much higher than the tunnel itself. While the hall was pretty empty, rubble was strewn around, and one of the exits had partially caved in. They might have been able to squeeze through, but there were better prospects before that. Cedar pointed to the other side, where another opening led further in.

  A brief room was just behind, and the vestiges of a door led further. They moved on and entered a larger room. All sorts of wood splinters were strewn, and Cedar paused, thinking.

  “What’s there?” Phelan asked.

  “I think that’s a common room – a refectory, probably. Long tables, chairs, looks like.”

  He bent and picked a metal goblet, dented. Something had smashed it, as was the rest of the room.

  “Fight must have been fierce,” Phelan said.

  Cedar nodded, moving his lantern to see if something was looking interesting.

  “Once they broke through, the defenders had no choice… watch it,” he said.

  Phelan froze. Cedar pointed to the side.

  “Skeleton.”

  The two approached carefully, stepping over demolished tables. Cedar knelt, looking.

  “Can’t tell how he died, but…”

  He stopped because it was apparent the side of the skull had been caved in. Someone had used a big blunt weapon, slaying whoever that had been. He couldn’t even tell if it was a defender or an attacker. Then he spotted something. He moved carefully. The leather had seemed intact at first, but it broke into fiberlike strands as he pulled.

  “Dagger,” Phelan recognized.

  “He still had it sheathed. Wonder why he didn’t pull it out when they came for him.”

  In the dim light of the lantern, the weapon shone slightly. Cedar examined it carefully, then handed it to Phelan.

  “First loot. And that’s a good omen.”

  “Because it’s easy?”

  “No. Because it hasn’t even rusted. This has been centuries, and it is still good. That’s a sign this is really a Dungeon. Intact items in the middle of rubble? You have mana pooling around.”

  “Good or bad mana?”

  “There is no good or bad mana. Mana is mana. Even the one that comes out of death places like this, it can be used by a priest as easily as a void magician.”

  Phelan looked at the dagger, then carefully put it in his pack.

  “We’ll get it appraised by your dad. He might not forge anything anymore, but he should still have an eye for that work.”

  “Will do!”

  They moved on, checking the rest of the common room. Another pair of skeletons was at the end, looking like they’d been defending the exit from the room. Another side door was there, and Cedar checked it first. The room behind was full of more broken furniture and a giant fireplace. He looked up but couldn’t see anything in the chimney. It probably turned at some point, before exiting the mountain.

  The kitchen had plates, forks, knives, and all manner of implements, as well as a pile of large pans, largely intact. There was no skeleton left there, and nothing seemed worth taking, so the two of them left the side room alone and moved on.

  There was a small hallway behind, and Cedar pondered briefly his choices. Without any hints, he picked the right side, and they continued.

  The floor plan was not extensive, and over the next half-hour, they found two stairs going up and one going down. The only item seemingly worth anything was an ornamented ring with a gemstone that shone faintly in the lantern lights but didn’t seem to have a color.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Up or down?” he asked Phelan.

  “You ask me?”

  “You get to pick. We’ll check everything anyway. And we will probably even camp in here before heading back, in any case.”

  “Down?”

  “Dungeon doesn’t mean it has dungeons, you know.”

  “You said it doesn’t matter.”

  “True. Down it is, then.”

  The lower floor was probably smaller than the entrance level. It was a curving hallway with doorways at various intervals. Most of the openings still had their doors attached or, in a few cases, fallen on the ground. Cedar noted that most of the doors with locks had been smashed. The invaders had gone over each room to make sure no one hid in there.

  Unfortunately, the small rooms looked like they were storage for various perishable supplies, now gone. A few still had shelves, often hanging from the wall on a single chain. The chains themselves seemed in good shape, the breaks seeming to be man-inflicted rather than worn out from age. They found a single skeleton, with a robe that Cedar judged had to have been a woman’s rather than a mage’s. He doubted there had been a mage among the defenders anyway.

  But when they got into the next storage room, they found an unexpected bounty.

  “Bingo,” Cedar said.

  There was a flat crystalline lens on the intact table. It was yellow-grey in color in the dim light of the lantern, but Cedar knew that it was going to look the same in full daylight.

  “What’s that?” Phelan asked.

  “That’s our bonus. Well, no, that’s the main loot; the rest will be the bonus. That, my boy, is what you can’t find outside of a Dungeon. That’s a Soul.”

  “A Soul. Like, for real?”

  “You expect it to be something else?”

  “I don’t know… I’ve never seen one.”

  “Few people do. They’re rare. But when you’re an adventurer… that’s what you really wish to find. That’s the big bucks, as they say.”

  “It doesn’t look very impressive,” Phelan said.

  “It doesn’t have to. What matters is not what it looks like; it’s what it does.”

  He took the lens carefully. He knew he did not need to – its fragile aspect was mostly illusory. Souls were very, very resilient, he knew. You could drop a ten-thousand-pound stone on them, and they’d resist the shock.

  “Of course, it’s a New Soul. An Old Soul, you’d find it on the body of whoever used it. This one coalesced on its own. Unless we find a legendary named weapon, it’s the best thing that will come out of this Dungeon.”

  He turned his hand, offering it to Phelan. The boy looked at it, hesitating, then picked it up. As soon as his fingers grasped the crystalline item, he froze. Cedar smiled, knowing what the boy saw in his mind as if a paper had unfolded there.

  “It feels weird. And… not impressive?”

  “New Soul indeed,” Cedar commented. “Tiny boons on the mental side and little to nothing else.”

  “I expected more…”

  “Well, this is a nearly blank slate, barely shaped, and only by luck. Anyone who starts on such will find it easy to grow their stats, shape it in any way they want or can.”

  He smiled, almost unseen in the wan lantern light.

  “An Old Soul would fetch an enormous price, but for some nobles, a New Soul is almost as good. Any Soul is good, period.”

  Phelan looked at him, curious.

  “You can’t really found a noble lineage or anything similar without a Soul. And, well, your Old Soul goes to your heir, but any other children you have may benefit from having one.”

  “How do you use it?”

  “You ‘slot’ it in your chest. Just over your heart. And once there, you can’t remove it. Unless you’re dead, that is. So, don’t even think about it. Maybe you’ll have a Baron or more taking you in as a part of his retinue, train you to grow that Soul. Until the day you die in his service and he reclaims it for another of his favorites or close guards.”

  “Training to grow a Soul? How does that work?”

  “Double dipping, they call it. If you’re a weenie and start bulking muscles, the more you gain, the bigger the percentage that gets recorded, and it also applies to your effective base strength. If you can double your strength from before you had the Soul, you will add 100% to the Soul’s strength, and that means you effectively double your strength again. Of course, the more the Soul helps you, the harder it is to gain strength, so growing any stat to those +300% levels or higher is usually the work of multiple successive Ensouled.”

  “You never thought to…”

  “No. It is tempting, but people with a small Soul are no better than people without until it grows strong enough. That’s the work of a lifetime. Anyone who wants to steal it will have to kill you for it. Better… safer to sell it.”

  Cedar picked the New Soul from Phelan’s hand and slid it into his pack.

  “Well, we have our big treasure. Let’s find out if there is more.”

  He slapped his hand on Phelan’s shoulder.

  “At least you won’t have to worry about your father’s business for some time now.”

  On the opposite side of the stairs, they found an unexpected thing.

  A massive ornate reinforced door. With two steel bars on it, locking it.

  “Curious,” Cedar said.

  “They didn’t break it?”

  “No. Well, that, too. But… they barred the door on the outside.”

  Phelan’s head snapped back toward the door.

  “I… see…”

  He hesitated.

  “Do you think they locked people inside?”

  “It is bizarre,” Cedar replied. “Everyone else, they made sure they got to and slaughtered. Why would they try to starve defenders in there?”

  He pondered the door. That one was massive, he realized. The structure itself had reinforced steel bars and a much darker wood. The bar slots seemed to have been melted into place, and the metal was a different type. And unlike the rest, this time, the wood seemed to be intact, untouched by the centuries.

  “Maybe the position was better defended. They probably had suffered losses on their side, after all.”

  He put the lantern down and moved to the door.

  “Come on, boy. Let’s see what they wanted locked away.”

  The difference between the fortress’ carved halls and the new section was immediately apparent. The hallway behind the locked door was mortared stone. The stones themselves were very regular and of equal size, seemingly having been selected carefully. Cedar passed his hand over, feeling the smoothness of the wall.

  Another detail was the sconces that were aligned along the two walls, unlike the hooks for lanterns that dotted the fortress walls.

  “It looks different,” Phelan said, also noting the change.

  “Good catch,” he encouraged the boy.

  They moved on. The hallway was longer than he’d expected and it opened into a room that was also very different from what had preceded.

  The ceiling was much higher, barely visible with the lanterns. The square room included circular columns, delimiting a central area with a slightly depressed square, half a foot deep.

  It also had skeletons strewn all around. Cedar immediately estimated there had to be a dozen of the dead, maybe more. Most of them wore parts of armor, and there were weapons all around. He even found one “sitting” on a small stone bench set against the wall. There was a pair of those on each of the side walls, including the entrance.

  The bones themselves were dull, but the various armors seemed almost all intact – save one chainmail that had a large chunk of it torn out. It seemed that if those defenders had been locked in, they still had fought against their enemies before being stuck there.

  In fact, Cedar was willing to bet as he checked all the dead that most of those had been killed in combat, not from hunger or anything.

  “They might have fought among themselves once locked.”

  “Pardon?” Phelan said.

  “Sorry, thinking out loud.”

  The boy looked again, and Cedar could swear he had a frown.

  “That’s of, shall we say, academic interest,” Cedar snorted.

  “There is a lot of loot there.”

  “Well, we get to pick and choose. Let’s see the rest of this side first.”

  The only way out seemed to be at the opposite side of the entrance, and Cedar paused, raising his lantern.

  Above the gateway, a blazon was engraved in the stone. This one was rounded, not the usual shield shape. Three slices, with the top being a curved sword thrust upward, the rightmost a sort of cup, and the leftmost a staff akin to a shepherd’s staff. The three parts were delimitated by a thick line connecting to a central circle.

  The blazon was totally unlike anything he’d seen in the noble houses of this corner of the world, and definitively not the defenders’.

  “Something?” Phelan asked.

  “Definitively. I think this is an older part of the fortress, something built before the former owner took possession of it, although I have no idea what it is.”

  The hallway led to an intersection with two side corridors and one continuing into the depths. Again, Cedar left to Phelan the choice of their first exploration, and he picked left.

  That corridor ended up quickly, opening into another large room. Several skeletons were lying there, almost all wearing armor. Two, at the end of the room, were clad in remains of tunics, though. For something that was a few centuries old, the cloth was well preserved, and the decorations on it were almost intact.

  Unfortunately, the room had no other exit, so they turned back and, this time, went into the deeper part of the fortress.

  The next room had a steel grate at its entrance, but it was open and did not seem ever to have had a lock. The room was slightly smaller than the first but similar without the “pond” area. It also had only three corpses, all arrayed around the opening into the next hallway. One skeletal hand was still wrapped around a shortsword. Cedar stopped and checked it.

  “Look at it,” he said.

  “Nice. Inscriptions?”

  “Yes, looks like engravings on the blade. What do you think?”

  “Magic?”

  Cedar laughed.

  “Most magical weapons are useless without the proper Soul to power them. But it is probably something we’ll see if we decide to bring it back.”

  “Maybe we can come back?”

  “Well, don’t expect another Soul. It takes decades to form, at best. So, only lesser stuff. But the Adventurer’s Guild may be interested in keeping track of this Dungeon in its archives. Who knows, someday, another may find it and come… like we did.”

  “There is an Adventurer Guild?”

  “There is a Guild for everything. Your dad paid his due for the Blacksmiths, and even if you take over after all, you’ll have some master coming up to inspect your abilities. Where do you think I got access to the archives for this? You can do without, but good luck selling your stuff safely or at decent prices.”

  “Farmer guilds?”

  Cedar snorted, refraining from a full-throated laugh.

  “Maybe not everything. Let’s continue.”

  The next room was almost bare and had another open grate door. Unlike the previous ones, this had no skeleton in there. But inside the column-delimited square, it had a pedestal with what looked like an orb reflecting the lantern light.

  “What’s that?” Phelan asked.

  Cedar immediately raised his fist in warning.

  “Careful. Can be anything. Decoration, magic, whatever.”

  He noticed again the circular three-slice blazon engraved on the pedestal. Phelan was crouching to examine the pillar as well while keeping his distance.

  “Is this always like this when you’re adventuring?”

  “I would say pretty much, but each Dungeon is different. When it is a Dungeon, that is. Sometimes, it’s just a ruin. Yet sometimes ruins are more dangerous.”

  He waved around.

  “This one, it’s a real Dungeon, no discussion.”

  Phelan stood up, wiping one hand and then the next while raising the lantern to have a better look at the enigmatic orb. Cedar was about to tell him they needed to move on when there was a gong-like sound.

  “What the???”

  Cedar immediately looked around, but there was no obvious source or trigger.

  “You said there was no trap,” Phelan said accusingly.

  “That doesn’t seem to be a trap. At least not a classic one.”

  As if to put the lie to his words, there was a distant clicking sound.

  “Do you hear that, Phelan?”

  “Hear what?”

  He turned just in time to see something moving in the partial darkness of the corridor they had just entered from. He barely had time to wonder what it was when the thing he’d seen came to light.

  A skeleton. Not lying on the ground but moving around. A smoky darkness danced between the bones, seemingly providing a glue to hold them together. Then he recognized the partial chainmail and, more importantly, the shortsword. That was the armor that encased the dead in the previous room, the one whose bones were still wrapped around that engraved weapon. And now, that very same skeleton was coming at them.

  “NECROMANCY!” Cedar shouted.

  “What? WHAT?” Phelan jumped when he realized what was coming out of the dungeon corridor.

  Cedar kicked at the skeleton, pushing it back into the corridor.

  “GIVE ME HELP,” he yelled.

  “What do I do? Is it the orb?”

  “I DON’T KNOW, BUT…”

  Cedar stopped, because he saw distant movement behind the skeleton who was coming back, weapon raised in an odd stance. He pulled out his shortsword – taken in case they had problems. Well, they did have one now, and not the usual wild beast that could be attracted by the allure of a Dungeon or a simple ruin. He thrust, and the skeleton batted at his blade with his, moving it aside as if it was still worried about being wounded.

  “It won’t move!” Phelan said behind him.

  “Don’t bother with the orb. Help me! The door! Get the door!”

  He parried the thrust from the skeleton, moving slightly back. His peripheral vision spotted the boy pushing the grate door, which turned with a horrible grinding noise.

  “Is there something to keep it closed?” he asked while trying to kick the skeleton back again. The dead slashed at his leg, but Cedar moved back, narrowly avoiding the strike. Thankfully, the skeleton did not seem fast, at least not as fast as a living fighter would be.

  “Got a small latch.”

  “Get ready to close.”

  “Move! I’m ready!” Phelan exploded next to him.

  Cedar stumbled back, and the boy pushed the grate, blocking the skeleton which was already trying to follow. He pushed too, turning and putting his back against the grate. Phelan moved around and pulled at the deadbolt, making another horrid grinding noise.

  “Good! Locked!”

  “Good work…”

  Cedar stopped. A brief flash of discomfort and his tunic fluttered. He looked down and saw a pike head pushing out of his open tunic. Phelan spotted it at the exact moment, his eyes bulging.

  The pike pulled back, and Cedar stumbled away from the grate. One of those fuckin’ skeletons had speared him! He moved aside, stumbling again, just in time as the pike flashed again, moving precisely in the middle of one of the openings between the bars of the grate door. Phelan jumped back in fright as the pike pulled back again.

  As Cedar slumped next to the doorway, he carefully placed down his lantern. The boy had dropped his own, and it was extinguished, he realized. It would be bad if they were both lightless, left in the dark. Skeletons probably did not need light.

  He almost laughed, blood coming up to his lips. The pike head he’d just seen poking again had a set of nasty barbs, and he knew those had probably torn up his insides.

  “Cedar? Cedar! Talk to me!”

  “I’m fuckt,” he said, bubbles coming up.

  The darkness was already coming up, and not just because there was only one lantern left burning. Cedar knew he was dead. He’d seen enough dead during the Dukes’ War along with Mariek. He’d avoided that fate then, but one could only evade fate for so long.

  “Door. Behind,” he breathed. “Run. Maybe there back exit.”

  “No, I’m going to carry…”

  “I dead. Just finish dying. Get… get pack. Get the Soul. You need money. Sell it to Yarak Guild. Nowhere else. Guild in Yarak.”

  He thought there was no color left in the room, but for a brief moment, he also thought the orb now had gained color, a blue that was also black, yet blue still.

  Then Cedar Halwi thought no more.