Tara Maclay Dungeon Heart (Patreon)

Tara sighed as she glanced back up at the lighted sign over the counter that told her how many people were in front of her in the line. ‘38,465… 64.’ It wouldn’t have been so bad if any of the people around her would give her the time of day, but they were all wasted out souls without any life in them which probably shouldn’t be that surprising as they were dead. 

She blinked as she noticed a striking looking man in black leather, standing by the guardrail that overlooked the lower level of wherever the heck they were, he looked a bit more solid than the rest of the souls she’d seen. “Where are we?” she asked, hoping he had enough life left to answer her.

The man turned and looked at Tara with a slight smile with a hint of a smirk. “You’re in the line for the Grey Eternity, it’s the place where souls go that aren’t particularly bad or saintly to wait for their particular deity to claim them.” Truth be told, not that he was going to, but she shouldn’t have been in the line to start with, a soul that pure and connected to her goddess should have been snapped up before you could say snatch, but she’d died on the hellmouth and that always complicated things, they’d fix things once she got to talk to the desk clerk but their loss was his gain.

“What were you looking at?” she asked curiously, relieved to have someone to talk to.

“The line for reincarnation; it’s a bit sad, they have their souls scrubbed clean of personality in a rather painful process then they’re sent somewhere to live another life. Memories are what make a person who they are, without them...” He shook his head. 

“It wouldn’t be my choice,” Tara said with a shudder, as she thought about her girlfriend’s various uses of memory spells on her.

“I don’t blame you.”

Tara took another step forward as the line moved up, taking her a bit closer to the man watching the events below. “Aren’t you going to lose your place in line?”

“I’m in no hurry besides, you should see the flowers.” The man smiled as he gestured toward the level below.

Tara glanced at the counter with a sigh then stepped closer to the rail so that she could see the flowers, but looking at the lower level all she saw was a layer of glass over another floor composed of many rooms, all of them completely devoid of color. 

“Word to the wise, you want to open the door before the guards grab you.” 

Tara barely had time to ask, “What?” before the man reached out and grabbed her.

“Best of luck.” He smiled as he tossed Tara over the guardrail towards the lower level.

“Ahhhh!” Tara felt her stomach lurch as she fell through the air toward a room with two doors and a couple of large, scary golems that guarded the closed door she was falling towards. She brought her arms up to try to protect her face a second before she crashed through the glass ceiling of the room below and landed almost perfectly with her outstretched hand on the doorknob. The knob twisted as she tried to use it to get to her feet and the two statues came to life, but before they even managed to turn their heads completely in her direction she had vanished and the door was shut once more. The two golems faced forward, returning to their eternal vigil. 

She blinked as she found herself in a black void looking at a character sheet that reminded her of a computer game. “What in the world?”

She glanced around and quickly found that she was stuck in front of the floating page as she couldn’t move her legs. She glanced down and almost hyperventilated when she realized that she didn’t have legs, just her torso, arms and presumably her head. Thankfully her existential crisis was averted by an announcement, “Welcome to the Experimental Dungeon Lord program, a new way to streamline the process of dungeon creation. Please select your avatar’s race and assign your points for stats then build your dungeon.”

“What’s going on?” Tara asked warily, knowing that she wasn’t supposed to be here. After a few seconds of silence she said, “I shouldn’t be here.” She waited several more seconds then looked back at the character sheet. She studied the little green demon like creature under the race label. “Gremlin.” She looked at her stats. “Strength 8, Dexterity 12, Endurance 10…” she trailed off as she noticed that her Intelligence, Wisdom and Magic had stars in them rather than numbers. She looked at the box that listed her 10 extra stat points then pushed the up arrow next to intelligence. She sighed as she heard a beep noise and nothing happened. She reached out and swapped her race. “Slime? Seriously? Worse, strength but better endurance, no thanks.”

She selected the next option and smiled slightly at the cute puppy. “Tempting but I like having hands.” She swapped again and got a brown bear. “Much better strength.” She flipped to the next race and smiled as she saw a picture of her as a pixie. She lost her smile as she looked at her avatar’s strength. “Gah, 18 to 2 strength, yeah, that’s a nasty drop.” She glanced at her dexterity which was 14 and her endurance which was 7 then looked at the racial ability list. “Flight.” She pushed the button on the left side of her strength score and smiled slightly as it dropped to one strength and her already crappy weight allowance dropped to five pounds. “Not much worse than two and that gives me eleven points to spend.” She advanced the race again and looked at the gremlin. “Seven strength. Hmm… it can’t be this easy can it?”

She flipped back to the bear then pushed the strength down to one. “That gives me 27 points.” She swapped her race back to pixie and winced at the -24 in strength. “That can’t be good, still weight allowance is ½ pound so there has to be a minimum and it’s not like I’m going to be fighting in melee, hopefully.” She pushed the arrow to the right of the perk section and looked at her choices. “Oh, five points to double my movement speeds. Three points gets me increased mana regeneration.” She selected her perks then hit accept. She reached for the accept button for that page then stopped as she realized she wanted to check something first. She pushed the arrow on the left of the racial perks section and smiled as it popped up with racial quirks. “My Precious, -2 strength, +1 endurance and +1 magical quality to starting personal item.” She selected the quirk then looked at the next one. “Pyromancer, bonus to fire magic and a weakness to water. No thanks, no idea how common water magic is.” She looked at the next quirk. “Nature’s friend, boost to nature magic and a weakness to fire. No thanks… Nighttime flier, boost during the night and a penalty during the day, no thanks. Glowing wings, -2 to starting stealth skill, increased flight speed. Not like I have any real skill in stealth.”

She grabbed the quirk then closed the quirks page and tapped the arrow next to the race entry then frowned as a popup appeared telling her that she’d have to reselect her perks if she continued. “Perks or perks and quirks? Dawn and Xander would be disappointed if I didn’t at least try.” She hit yes then smiled when she saw that her quirks where still there listed. “Okay, this could be fun.” She brought up the bear quirks and looked them over. “Tough Old Bastard, you’re not as strong as you used to be but you’re tougher, -2 strength, +1 endurance and increases hit points from endurance by 50%. Yeah, I’m not going to be able to damage anything in melee, then again, it was already a lost cause.”

She selected the trait then looked through the rest of them, sadly none of the rest of them looked particularly good. She swapped to the wolf puppy and looked over his quirks. “Snow puppy, white fur, -2 to hide except in the snow, grants frost affinity.” She glanced over the rest of them as she muttered to herself, “Roar… I don’t need that. Don’t need sharp teeth in exchange for health either.” She looked through the next couple of options then backed out and swapped to the slime. “Gooey, leaves a trail of goo, bonus to escape attempts, not happening. Bouncy, -1 to strength but you add your dex bonus to jump checks and no longer take falling damage… okay, that’s nice.” She added it to her growing list of quirks. She glanced through the rest of the list of quirks then swapped to the gremlin.

She glanced at the quirks. “Jury Rig, you can make equipment work even without the proper skill but using it on something increases the chance of that particular item breaking. Might help.” She looked over the next few quirks with a frown as they weren’t particularly useful, she didn’t want to trade speed for strength or dex for strength or anything. “Greedy Gremlin, -2 strength +20% loot. Either my idea works or I’m already a cripple.” She selected the quirk then swapped back to pixie and added her perks back. 

Perks:

Fast Flight:

Mana Regeneration: 

Quirks:

My Precious: -2 strength, +1 endurance and +1 magical quality to starting personal item.

Greedy Gremlin: -2 strength +20% loot

Tough Old Bastard: -2 strength, +1 endurance and increases hit points from endurance by 1.5. 

Glowing wings: -2 to starting stealth skill, increased flight speed. 

Snow puppy: White fur, -2 to hide except in the snow, grants frost affinity

Bouncy: -1 to strength, add your dex bonus to jump checks and no longer takes falling damage.

Jury Rig: You can make equipment work even without the proper skill but using it on something increases the chance of that particular item breaking.

Greedy Gremlin, -2 strength +20% loot.

Tara looked over her perks and quirks. She doubted her plan would work but she wouldn’t know if she didn’t try. She hit accept then looked at the two pictures on the page that appeared, a simple silver ring and an old fashioned wishing well. She read the text at the top of the page, “Your magical items were randomly rolled, you may add up to three drawbacks to increase their power.” She looked at the ring. “+5 to magic stat. I’m not even sure what my starting magic stat is. Okay, let’s see…” She looked at the wishing well. “Tossing an item into the well has a chance to temporarily boost the item, failure costs one temporary point of intelligence. I can’t see that going well.” She tapped the arrow next to the ability then swapped it to costing temporary strength. “Better than the rest of my stats.”

She touched the icon under the ring for drawbacks and looked at the options. “Glowing, yeah that gives almost no bonus, no thanks. Missile attraction, I’d rather not die, again.” She shivered as she thought about the bullet that had killed her. “Nope, turning green doesn’t give the ring enough of a boost.” She felt like laughing slightly as she found a rather nice drawback that reduced one of the user’s stats to one while using it. She added that ‘drawback’ and selected strength then looked at the bonus her ring gave. “+10 magic, that should help.” She selected the second drawback slot then looked through the options. “Takes double damage from melee? Nice boost but that sounds rather painful.” She scanned through the various options then selected double damage from melee to see how much it boosted her ring. “+20 magic, decreases training time of any magic by half. That would have been nice to have back in Sunnydale.”

Tara looked at the wishing well and looked for a decent drawback. “Steals five points of named stat, must have enough to steal. That gives a suitably impressive bonus.” She selected it then blinked as the well’s ability changed. “The Wishing Well has a chance to grant a permanent minor bonus to an item, a failure drains 5 points of strength permanently. Yeah, that’s going to suck.” She selected the next drawback for her wishing well. Item is cursed on a failure in addition to other effects. “Modest permanent bonus.” Tara selected the last drawback slot then looked through the list of drawbacks looking for something suitably impressive that wouldn’t cripple her ability to use the wishing well. “On failure, increase curse to major. I guess I can live with that.”

Tara selected it then looked at the bonus on the Wishing Well, “Permanent moderate enchant added to the item or stat loss and a major curse, could be worse I guess.” She looked at the ring then selected the last slot then selected double damage and hit accept. She looked at the ring. “Ring of the Archmage: +50 magic, decreases training time of any magic by half, allows training of magical affinities under the proper conditions and doubles magical damage the user deals. All of the low cost of increasing the damage I take significantly. Still, if nothing else it works as a training booster.”

She looked over her items then hit accept. She was rather surprised that the system didn’t object to her -30 strength but maybe the ring covered it or maybe whoever had designed the system didn’t have a problem with people screwing themselves over. She sighed as the character screen vanished completely rather than just making a new tab and a new window opened. “No going back now.” She looked at the page that had a list of affinities and boxes with zeroes next to them other than Frost which had a 2. She glanced down at the spells button and the mostly empty field under it, “Conjure ice cubes. Must have come with the frost affinity. Ten points to spend on affinities and 20 points on spells, okay, I can make that work.”

Tara glanced over the options, “Earth, Fire, Frost, Holy, Nature, Shadow, Wind, Water… okay, frost already has two points in it and I can learn affinities with my ring.” She pushed the left arrow near the frost affinity label and sighed as nothing happened other than a soft beeping sound. “I guess I can’t lower it for more points. Now I just have to figure out what to increase.” She increased her frost affinity a point and smiled as she watched the damage bonus go from +20% to 25%. “This has potential depending on how nice the frost spells were.”

Tara opened the spells page and looked at the basic spells that were offered. “I can buy the first two levels of spells in everything other than ice, which I can buy the first three of and they’re cheaper.” She looked over the first level spells to get an idea of what she could buy, they were for the most part rather unimpressive, lighting candles, conjuring a rock that you could throw at people, conjuring a tiny stream of water much like some of the larger water guns, causing a tiny gust of wind and other such nearly useless spells. The second level of spells was slightly better and had potential. “Strength of Earth, 1d3 temporary bonus to strength for ten minutes. Endurance of Stone, 1d3 endurance by for ten minutes. Dexterity of water, Firebolt, frostbolt, ice slide, chill should slow people down.”

Tara pushed her frost affinity up and smiled as she picked up 5% frost resistance when she hit six points. “Not sure if I want to keep this but I’m curious.” She increased her frost affinity to twelve which took the rest of her points and smiled at the results. “120% more damage with frost spells and effects, 35% frost resistance and 10% frost absorb.” She tapped the absorb ability and stared at the description. “Some monsters absorb a percent of the damage they would have taken before resistances as health and mana, usually related to their creature type. Not sure how much that will help my health if I can’t grab anything that boosts my frost resistance but it should help my mana.”

She briefly considered spreading her affinities out then decided that it would be a waste, frost was the only affinity she had a boost in which meant it was the only affinity that she could boost high enough to get the absorb ability. She opened her spell tab and looked over her options. Let’s see, first level spells cost one regardless of affinity and I need to buy the first level if I want to buy the second level which are two points so three points if I want the strength boosting ability from earth.” She picked up the two earth spells then looked over the frost list.

After some consideration she grabbed Frostbolt, Chill, Frost Armor, Frost Nova, Ice Storm and Ice Golem which ate up the rest of her points save one. She used the last point to buy Holy Touch which healed a point of damage. “That should help me heal my monsters.” She wasn’t sure if she was making a mistake overspecializing but she didn’t see the point in grabbing a bunch of weak spells when she had the chance to grab spells that actually did a decent amount of damage. She tapped the accept button.

The voice from before said, “Dungeon creation, we’ve randomized your starting location, feel free to customize your dungeon with the Dungeon Points provided, as a special starting bonus moving rooms right now won’t cost DP. Keep in mind that you get DP by killing monsters and adventurers in your dungeon.”

Tara studied the image of what she was guessing was the outside of her dungeon, a small forest clearing that butted up against a stone cliff with a cave entrance. “Could be worse I guess.” She looked at the next imagine of a small cave with a short pillar of rock and a glowing purple orb sitting on it. “Yeah, that doesn’t look all that impressive.”

“Your dungeon heart is your soul, you’ll want to keep it safe. Easy, right? Just hide it in a room then seal it, right? I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, there has to be a path to your dungeon heart though you’re encouraged to create traps, monsters and other obstacles to protect it from rampaging monsters and adventurers.”

Tara shivered as she realized that her soul was sitting on a pedestal in the first room of her dungeon for anyone to take, corrupt or abuse. “Crap.” She touched the map and smiled as it expanded into something that looked a bit like one of Dawn and Xander’s computer games. She glanced at the Wishing Well in the list of features she owned but hadn’t placed. “I wish I knew if monsters or adventurers could break the well.” She sighed as the voice didn’t answer her. 

Tara reached out and touched the cave on the map to see if it would give her more information then blinked as it turned into a small model in her hand leaving nothing but an entrance next to a greyed out forest clearing. “Okay, that probably means I can move it.” She put the basic cave next to the wishing well then looked over her options. “Hallways, chambers, doors, monsters, features and a greyed out option to buy another floor for 2,000 points, I can’t see that happening any time soon.” She glanced at the number on the top of the page. “500 points to customize everything and buy some defenses.” She looked at the features tab. “Two hundred points for a river of a lava like substance that damages anything that gets too close, five points to cover a room in snow, 28 DP for a continual blizzard that damages everyone in the room, I’m guessing I get a discount because of my frost affinity, could be worse. Small pond, 50 DP which would probably be cheaper if I had a water affinity.”

She went back to looking at her options for rooms. “Basic cave room, 50 DP, Monster Dens 100 DP, Monster Spawning Dens which cost ten times the cost of the monster… yeah that might be a while. Basic Boss Chamber, 300 DP. This is going to cost a lot.”

Tara purchased another basic cave and put it near the entrance. “I guess I have to pay for a connecting tunnel.” She opened the monster tab and looked everything over. It was a little underwhelming at first glance as goblins, pixies, slimes and wolves were the only monsters she could currently create. She brought up the pixie option and winced as the basic pixie started at 100 DP and went up from there. She looked at the slimes. “Five points, for a monster Dawn could kill with a kick.” She looked at the customization options. “Five points for hands and the ability to use items which means they can use their mighty two points of points of strength to use a knife or something.” She played around with tweaking and boosting the slimes, it quickly became apparent that doing much of anything to them drastically increased their cost.

She swapped to looking at the goblins, they were slightly more useful but they were also 50 points each. “It’s like they want us to fail.” She winced as she added magic use and the price jumped to 100 points per goblin and gave them three points of magic. “That’s not going to work.”

Tara backed out of the goblin screen and looked at the puppy ‘monsters’ she could create. “10 points for something slightly less useless than a slime which people will want to walk off with, yeah… I can’t see that going well.” She paused as she realized the puppies had two traits, trainable and cute. She tapped the trainable trait then read the description to herself, “They’re dogs, they learn tricks with the right training. It’s not exactly clear what tricks they can learn but I might be able to train them to fetch things for me.” She tapped the cute trait. “Most humans are reluctant to kill puppies out of hand unless they’re causing damage. They might work as scouts or mounts if I get more pixies and they have a collar equipment slot.” 

She swapped back to the pixies and looked at her customization options. She modified it by taking away its wings. ‘That dropped the price to 50. Let’s see, anything else I can do to drop the price on these?’ She dropped the creature’s magic to 1 then removed the ability to use magic. “Wingless pixies, 10 DP, crappy strength, decent dexterity and okay endurance. They should work for scouts and if they don’t, I’ll figure out something they’re good for.” She wished that Xander or Dawn were here to help her, as they liked tweaking things, she’d even take Willow at this point though she wasn’t quite as good at getting the most out of games.

She went back to the monster lair section then built her modified pixie den. It felt a bit expensive at a fifth of her total starting DP but she had a feeling she was going to lose minions right and left for a while so paying for them individually didn’t really make sense either. She placed the den above the main cave on the map then created her puppy den and put it below the main cave, of course it was really just left and right if you were standing at the entrance. She selected the monster den again then created a slime den that created slimes that had hands and stuck it to the right of the main entrance. “I’ve got 150 DP left to play with.”

Tara placed her ‘free’ cave to the right of the slime den then opened the features options. She added the constant blizzard effect to the room then looked at the pond option and selected the iced over option which dropped the price of the pond by half. She placed the pond in the middle of the room then tweaked things a bit so that it was as deep as she could make it without increasing the DP cost which was about twenty feet down. She looked at the image of the blizzard filled room. “Doesn’t really look right without the snow sticking besides, it gives me more cover.” She added snow to the pond room and the starting room to make sure she had decent hiding spots. “87 DP left and I need to connect the rooms.” She pulled up her hallway option and built a dirt tunnel to the various dens then narrowed and squashed the tunnels to the puppy den and the pixie den as much as she could so that anyone else would have to crawl. “That leaves a straight path to my slimes and the pond room.”

She selected the dungeon heart and tried to move it into her pond.

The system voice said, “Invalid option, no path exists to the dungeon heart. Either make the ice breakable, make a door or place the dungeon heart in a different location.”

Tara opened her door tab then looked through her options. “I want a hole in the ice that isn’t obvious. A horizontal door should be the trap door option.” She selected the trapdoor option then chose the option for the breakable ‘door’ to look like the surrounding material. She frowned slightly as she noticed the cracks in that section of the ice, they weren’t overly visible but they were certainly noticeable if you looked. She selected the secret door option and selected snow covered which should mean you’d have to unbury the snow first. She frowned as she tried to move her dungeon heart to the pond and it beeped at her.

“You may not place the dungeon heart in a location that does damage or is in water.”

Tara scowled slightly as she reconsidered where to put her dungeon heart. “That would have been a nice hiding spot.” She looked at her DP total. “47” She looked at her hallway options and laughed as she found a dead end option. “Okay, this should work.” She had to tweak the map a bit to place the dead end option correctly but she put a dead end tunnel under the pond leading back toward the puppy den. She smirked as she was able to but her dungeon heart in the dead end corridor after tweaking the settings so the water didn’t flood in. She wasn’t sure it was worth the 10 DP but it was cheaper than a chamber which she didn’t have the points for. “That should work until I find a better place to put my dungeon heart.”

She looked at the wishing well. “Okay, I can place it anywhere I have enough space and it’s only 10 DP to move it.” She played with the dead end hallway option until she got a decent sized alcove in the room with the blizzard not too far from the entrance so you could just dash to it without taking too much damage from the blizzard or at least that was the idea. She placed the Wishing Well in the alcove and made sure it was protected from the blizzard. She frowned slightly at the bare stone around the well. “I’ll worry about covering it with snow when I figure out how easy getting DP is.”

She looked at her rather pathetic collection of 27 DP. She looked everything over then hit accept.

The system voice said, “You may call up your dungeon modification menu anywhere in your dungeon but having any wild monsters or humans may lock out your ability to modify particular floors until they’re killed or they leave. Feel free to explore the surrounding area but remember that if you’re not in your dungeon, you can’t modify it or help protect it.”

Tara blinked as she found herself in the alcove with her purple glowing dungeon heart looking at a dark wall of water that was probably ice cold or just above ice cold as it wasn’t frozen solid and her character sheet. “I might not have thought this through.” She glanced down at the simple backless dress she was wearing then back at her glowing wings. She giggled as she wiggled her glowing wings. “Yeah, Willow and Dawn would both be giggling right now.”

She pulled her attention off her wings and looked at her character sheet. ‘Equipment on one side, stats on the other, no inventory which sort of sucks though there’s a slot for a belt pouch so that might help, not that I’m tall enough to carry much of anything.’ She glanced at the stats and noticed there were columns for permanent and temporary stats. “Yeah, -30 permanent strength, I’m going to have to keep my ring on.” She’d sort of been hoping something would glitch and it would get set to one but no dice.

Tara looked at her endurance then glanced at her hit point total. “22 endurance and 165 health, at least I’m a durable pixie.” She was fairly sure pixies weren’t supposed to have that much health but she’d come in with some of her stats locked which meant she hadn’t had to spend points on them like she probably should have. She glanced at her magic stat, “Fifty base and another 50 from my ring.” She glanced at her mana total, “500 mana, that should let me cast a couple spells.”

She focused on her new spells and cast her ice armor so that she had a bit more resistance to cold then stuck her hand in the water. It was certainly cold but she didn’t notice her health decreasing or anything. She concentrated on her map of the dungeon then took a breath and slipped into the water. ‘Fuck that’s cold.’ She swam toward the surface where her trap door was. She was just glad that she hadn’t added a current or monstrous fish or anything to distract her because swimming through the icy cold water with one point of strength with her wings and while wearing a dress was hard enough, she didn’t need or want any distractions. 

Thankfully strength one for a pixie of her size wasn’t as bad as strength one would have been if she’d been human sized but swimming certainly wasn’t easy. The only saving grace to the whole thing was that her endurance was high enough that she wasn’t even remotely tired yet. She reached the trapdoor and had a minor panic attack as she realized that strength 1 wasn’t enough to break the ice that made up the trap door. Tara lashed out with her magic and blasted the door open, hoping that she hadn’t screwed it up permanently. She managed to crawl out of the ice cold water into the even colder blizzard and felt her health start to drop by four or five health every five seconds as she tried to make her way toward the main cave which was hopefully warmer.

Sadly, wings and a blizzard meant she was tossed around like a ragdoll and dashed against the ice and tumbled through the snow and otherwise smashed into anything and everything as the wind howled and the ice tried to freeze her solid. She’d lost over half her hit points by the time she managed to use magic to slingshot herself toward the blessedly warm tunnel. “Goddess, that sucked!”

Tara used a spell to dry her dress then focused on her new healing spell and started trying to put herself back together. Unfortunately it wasn’t exactly a quick process, at two health per 5 mana per spell but it got the job done leaving her feeling a bit drained but far better by the time she was done healing herself.

“Woof!”

Tara blinked as she turned and saw a rather large wiggly grey wolf puppy looking down at her with its tongue hanging out. “Hi?”

“Woof.” The puppy reached down and licked her which caused her to be covered in dog slobber.

Tara sighed as she added another disadvantage of being pixie sized to her list. She wiped the worst of the slobber off her face then closed her character sheet and opened her dungeon menu. She absently scratched the puppy’s chin as she worked on reading through the various tooltips as she tried to figure out how to make sure none of her monsters wandered into the blizzard room. Thankfully for the continued health of her creatures it was easy enough to mark the room as a hazard for her monsters. She looked at the new sign option she had. ‘1 DP for a nice wooden sign warning about the hazard, might as well.’  She spent a point to add a nice old fashioned wooden sign to the middle of the hallway that said, “Warning, Blizzard.” 

The puppy sniffed the sign then sat down and looked at her.

“Good sit.” She wasn’t sure what else she was supposed to say as she was more of a cat person or at least she had been, now she wasn’t sure, the puppies were rather cute. “Okay, time to explore and see what the place looks like.” She smiled as she flew up then headed down the corridor. The slime room was interesting, if only because it had a couple of slime pools. She glanced at the large slime or at least large to her, it was probably only the size of a soccer ball. It had two smallish blue arms and hands made out of the same blue jelly like substance as the rest of it. She smiled as another slime bounced out of the slime pit and started heading for the main chamber. “At least they spawn quickly.”

Tara wasn’t sure what she was going to do with the slimes other than use them as a delaying tactic or to lead monsters back to the cave so she could kill them. Of course, that required her to have some method of killing the monsters that were likely to show up other than her ice spells. She flew through the slime den and into the main cave. She flew down to where she saw a wingless female pixie wearing a simple white dress standing in the small tunnel that led to the pixie spawning grounds. “Hi?”

The pixie waved cheerfully. “Boss. Orders?”

“How good are you at riding?”

The pixie shook her head. “Never tried. How hard can it be?”