The group looked around. Athena said "This is getting kind of weird, maybe we should go back."
The boys shook their heads sadly, and pointed behind her. Zoe and Athena turned around and were surprised to find that the door they had come through had vanished! All that was there was a blank stone wall with a couple of torches burning on it.
"Maybe the door is hidden?" asked Zoe, hopefully.
"I don't think so," said Jon, "We were trying to find one before you came through. When you came, it looked like you were walking through solid stone - otherwise we would have grabbed the door and gone back!"
"Well," said Stan, "I guess we should press onwards then."
They headed down the long corridor. It soon became apparent that the torches behind them were the only ones around, and the darkness surrounded them. They dug through their packs and found that they each had a couple of torches. Stan and Brent each pulled out a torch, and they flared to life as soon as they were held aloft. They seemed to burn normally after that, unlike the creepy wall torches.
The group headed further down the hallway. The flickering torchlight was dim and cast strange shadows on the walls that seemed to move and jump out at them. They huddled a little closer together, trying not to look too scared. Soon, they came upon a wooden door mounted in the right hand side of the corridor.
"Shall we check it out?" asked Jon, pushing the door open.
"Nooo!" yelled the others in unison, but it was too late. Jon opened the door into a small room. At first he thought it must be some old-school medical classroom, because there were a couple of skeletons hanging from racks in the room. It took him a second to realize that the skeletons weren't hanging, they were standing. It took him another second to realize that dim points of light had started to glow in their empty eye sockets. The skeletons turned and charged towards him with surprising speed. Jon yelped and jumped back, knocking Stan and Zoe backwards. Before the group could react, the two skeletons were rushing through the door, clawing at them with bony hands.
A skeleton's claws scraped across Athena's ample armoured chest before she could bring her shield up to protect herself. The bony fingers caught on the woven steel, and Athena bashed the skeleton in the head with her axe. Its skull fell into two pieces and the rest of the bones collapsed into a pile.
Zoe caught her balance, and bashed the other skeleton in the head with her club. The skeleton shattered.
"What the fuck was THAT?!" gasped Jon.
"Skeletons," said Stan. "Standard low-level dungeon critters. I think we handled them well."
Jon looked at Stan with wide eyes, astonished at Stan's matter-of-fact attitude about walking skeletons clawing at them. He looked around but the others seemed nearly as nonplussed.
"Fuck," Jon muttered.
The group walked into the room. The room was empty, but there was another wooden door on the opposite wall. Athena and Zoe pushed past Jon and listened at the door, indicating for him to be quiet.
Brent walked up to Jon and whispered, "They're listening at the door to see what's there. Get your bow ready in case there's a fight."
Jon pulled out an arrow and tried to get his bow ready. It felt surprisingly natural, considering he had never shot a bow before. Athena turned around.
"I hear voices on the other side. Zoe and I will take point. Jon, Brent, get your ranged weapons ready. Stan, maybe you can start prepping a spell or something."
Then Athena and Zoe pushed the door open. The next room was lit by a fire burning in a brazier at its centre. All around the brazier, there were groups of filthy, naked, three-foot-tall monsters engaged in a shocking variety of sex acts. They all appeared to be male - very well-endowed males, at that, and they were variously sucking each other off, fucking each other up the ass, or masturbating in groups. One of them saw Athena and Zoe, pointed a finger at them, and screeched "Bree-yark!"
"Oh shit," said Zoe as several of the creatures got up and started walking towards them, stroking foot-long penises in their dirty hands. Stan started reading some strange words aloud from his book, and before the creatures got close to Zoe and Athena, the whole orgy suddenly fell asleep, snoring loudly.
Zoe and Athena backed through the door and slammed it shut.
"Let's see what's back down that long hallway," Jon suggested, and the others agreed. They tried to jam some bones into the door to hold it shut, but they didn't want to stick around for the creatures to wake up.
They continued down the corridor, warier this time. They were still moving too quickly, though, because they were caught off-guard by a dark passageway that opened off to the left. Before they could react, a weird creature the size of a small pony jumped into their midst. It looked like a cross between a cockroach and an armadillo, and Jon instinctively leapt back, repelled.
"Rust monster!" yelled Stan, but it was too late. The creature crashed into Zoe and Athena, knocking them over, and it started scrabbling and clawing at their chests.
Jon stepped back again, stunned, while Brent charged in and stabbed the monster with his daggers. The monster screeched and spun around, and Brent fell back, holding smoldering, bladeless dagger hilts in his hands.
"Shoot it, Jon!" yelled several voices at once, and Jon found himself aiming his bow at the creature with shaking hands. Before he could release his arrow, the monster had spun back around and was scrabbling at Zoe and Athena again. They were shouting incoherently, trying to fend the monster off with their weapons and shields.
Jon tried to calm himself down, and took careful aim. He really didn't want to shoot his sister or her friends, but he had to do something about the monster. He released an arrow into the back of its head, and found himself loading and drawing almost before the first arrow struck home. He shot again, and sprays of foul, black blood shot out of the beast into the air and all over Zoe and Athena. The monster fell down, twitching, and in a few seconds it lay still.
Brent and Stan rushed over to pull the monster off of the girls. They stood up, and Jon gasped at what he saw. Zoe and Athena were standing nearly naked in front of him. Their armour, shields, and weapons looked like traces of rust held together with rotted leather straps, and the leather garments they had been wearing underneath were apparently once held together with metal rivets, because they fell off in large pieces. The only clothes the girls had left were their boots, and loincloths held on with leather cords. The loincloths covered their privates, but not much else. Zoe's battle-wimple was still on her head, but Athena's helmet was scraps of leather and bone.
Athena and Zoe covered their breasts with their hands. This task was much easier for the relatively flat-chested Zoe than for the generously-endowed Athena. Brent immediately moved forward and gave Athena his black cloak. Zoe looked at Jon, pleadingly, but Stan beat him to it. Stan pulled off his robes and handed them to Zoe, leaving himself clad only in another loincloth and soft leather shoes.
"I don't like this dungeon," said Athena, and the groups continued down the hallway.
