3. Chapter 3 The Gate
We left the apartment before the sun cleared the ridgeline.
The five of us moved down the avenue in the half-dark with our packs on and our breath going white ahead of us.
Larg's forge was dark below the apartment, the hammer that marked every morning still quiet.
The cold had teeth this early. It sat in the seams of my coat and bit through the wool at my elbows.
Bjorna led. Her armor was on, her shield slung across her back, and she covered ground at a pace the rest of us matched without being asked.
Sif walked half a step behind her right shoulder, daggers on her hips, her silver hair pulled back and tied at the nape.
Nott was behind them in her dark cloak, her book left at home for the first time I could remember.
Liv walked beside me, her bow across her back and her quiver sitting at her hip.
Her ears were up and forward, swiveling after every sound the town made.
We came through the south gate and turned toward the portal.
I'd seen it before. My first morning with the party, before the walk to Cold Hollow.
A deep purple oval hanging in the air, taller than a man, pulsing slowly.
The Portal Master's table sat beside it, same as then.
The man in dark robes was already there, hood down, doing something with a ledger in the lamplight.
"I took care of the portal," Sif said. She said it like she'd picked up bread on the walk over. "Monthly pass. All five of us."
Bjorna's head turned. She looked at Sif for a long second. Sif didn't look back. She kept walking, her hands hooked into her belt, her stride easy and unbothered.
Bjorna held the look, then faced forward. She didn't say anything.
"A monthly pass?" Liv said. Her ears went higher. "Sif, those cost a fortune."
"I'm aware of what they cost."
"How much are we talking about?" I said.
"Enough that Bjorna just gave me The Look," Sif said.
"I didn't give you a look."
"You gave me The Look."
"I gave you a thankful glance."
"Bjorna, I've known you for years. That was The Look."
Nott adjusted the strap of her pack. “That’s very generous, Sif. I thank you.”
"I could have slept in," I said. "If we're not walking four hours, nobody needs to drag me out of bed before dawn."
"A little walking doesn’t hurt anyone," Liv said. "It's good for your legs."
"My legs were fine in bed."
"Your legs were fine in my bed," Liv said. "Don't make it sound like you were suffering alone."
Sif laughed, short and open. "Ah, the joy of the ‘bonded’ life."
“Are you being sarcastic?” I asked with a smile.
“When have you ever heard me be sarcastic?”
Liv coughed. “When have you ever not been sarcastic? I’ll have you know that the bonded life is a good one. I don’t regret my choice one bit.”
“Daniel is standing right beside you. You have to say that,” Sif replied.
“Sif, it’s too early to be yanking my chain,” I said.
“Yanking? Is that a proposition?”
Liv laughed and playfully punched Sif on the arm. “Enough, Sif. It doesn’t take much to get Daniel aroused. He is probably on the verge of pitching a tent in his trousers right now.”
“I am perfectly flaccid, thank you very much. It’s cold,” I replied.
“Enough. This isn’t what I want to talk about right now. Dungeon strategies? Yes. Daniel’s cock? No.” Bjorna scoffed.
The entire party, surprisingly including Nott, burst into laughter and then made their way to the glowing ring.
The Portal Master checked Sif's pass without looking up from his ledger. He made a mark, said "Cold Hollow hub" to no one in particular, and the oval shifted color. The deep purple brightened to something closer to violet, and the pulsing steadied to a constant glow.
Liv stepped up beside me, facing the portal.
"You've never been through one of these. Don't tense up. Let your body go loose, and keep your eyes open. It's going to feel like the ground drops out for about two seconds and then your feet find the other side. If you close your eyes, the balance goes and you stumble out like an idiot."
"Speaking from experience?" I asked.
"Speaking from Nott's experience. Last time she went through with her eyes closed, she walked straight into a tent pole,” Liv replied.
"That happened once," Nott said from behind us. "Three years ago."
"And I bring it up whenever I can," Liv said, grinning.
"I've noticed," Nott replied, rolling her eyes.
Bjorna went through first. She stepped into the violet and she was gone. There was no flash, no sound. She was there and then she wasn't. Sif followed without breaking stride. Then Nott, who stepped through with her eyes pointedly open.
"Go," Liv said. "I'm right behind you."
I stepped in.
The ground dropped. Liv was right about that.
One second I was standing on packed dirt outside the south gate of Halver's Reach, and the next I was standing on nothing.
The air around me wasn't air. It was heavier, colder, and it pressed against my skin from every direction at once.
My vision went to flat white and the white held for a count that lasted longer than I expected.
My stomach dropped the way it does when an elevator starts too fast, that lurch where your body hasn't caught up to where your feet are going.
Then my boots hit solid ground, and the white broke apart, and I was somewhere else.
The cold hit first. It was sharper here than in town, a deep chill that came off stone and stayed in the air.
Tall thin trees that I didn't recognize stood in a ring around a clearing of trampled dirt, and the sky above them was flat gray, heavy with clouds that looked like they'd been there all morning.
The portal shimmered behind me, the same violet oval seen from the other side.
The clearing spread out ahead of me, wider than I expected.
It had been walked flat by hundreds of boots.
A group of four sat on their packs to my left, eating something from a cloth.
Two women were checking gear near a canvas shelter.
A man was sharpening a blade on a stone, the sound of it carrying across the open ground in the still air.
It had the look of a place where people waited to go to work.
Liv came through the portal behind me, her ears flattening for a half-second before they popped back up. She shook her head once and grinned.
"See? Not bad," she said.
"Not bad is relative. My stomach is still in Halver's Reach."
"It catches up. Give it a minute. You’ll be right as rain soon enough. I promise."
Bjorna was already scanning the staging area.
Her size drew looks from the parties camped around the edges, same as everywhere she went.
The looks bounced off her. Sif stood beside her with her arms crossed, watching the other groups with the casual attention she gave anything outside the immediate job.
Nott had found a spot a few feet away and was standing still with her eyes on the treeline, reading something in the air the rest of us missed.
"Registration is over there," Bjorna said. She pointed toward a low stone building at the far edge of the clearing, set back under the trees. A door was propped open and lamplight spilled out of it. "Nott, with me. We'll go get our slot."
They walked off toward the building. Nott fell in beside Bjorna, matching her stride with the easy precision that came from years of walking next to someone three times her width.
They went through the door and the lamplight closed behind them.
Nott had mentioned the day before how Bjorna made her feel free.
I assumed that went both ways in their friendship.
"Slot?" I said.
Sif had found a flat stone near the edge of the clearing. She sat on it with her legs crossed at the ankle and her daggers resting across her thighs. She looked like she'd sat on that exact stone before.
"Instance," she said. "Cold Hollow runs instances. Each party gets their own version. Separate layout, separate enemies, all of it generated fresh for your group. You register, you get your slot, you go in."
"So there could be six parties in there right now and none of them are fighting in the same dungeon."
"That's exactly right."
"I didn't know they could do that. When we went to Cold Hollow the other time, I didn’t ask questions. I just went."
"Most dungeons can provide instances," Liv said. She'd dropped her pack next to Sif's stone and was stretching her legs, one foot braced against a tree root. "The big ones run dozens of instances at once. Cold Hollow caps out at eight or ten. The Splits handles a lot more."
Every party walking into that stone arch would get their own Cold Hollow, their own chambers, their own goblins.
The same dungeon, built fresh every time.
I looked across the clearing at the other groups gearing up and eating breakfast and thought about all of them descending into their own private version of the same hole in the ground.
"That's wild. How the hell is that even possible?” I asked.
Sif shrugged. "It's just how dungeons work. Dungeons are one of life’s great mysteries. They are formed by a dungeon core. Where the dungeon core comes from? Your guess is as good as mine."
“So this core is organic or some kind of living thing?”
“It’s a theory. Scholars for thousands of years have discussed and argued over dungeons and the core theory is what most of them came up with. It’s fascinating. We can get some books for you back at the Reach. You can be like Nott if you’re feeling like a little bookworm.” Sif smirked.
“That’s not a bad idea. Since I’m going to be spending a lot of my life inside these damn things, I might as well learn all I can about them.”
Sif leaned back on her palms and looked at me.
The morning light caught her silver hair and the blue of her eyes went pale in it.
Her shirt had ridden up where she was leaning, showing a strip of taut stomach above her belt, the lean muscle there catching the light.
The wolf-kin girl knew exactly what she was doing to me.