Creak… creak…
Outside the window, the rotten blades of a massive windmill turned slowly in the thin night fog. Each strained pull made the structure of the mill groan.
Inside the attic, the light was hardly any better than outside. Only a few faint threads of starlight slipped through the grime-coated window and the gaps in broken planks, barely outlining two squat, stocky figures.
Torin and Gremm, two young dwarves whose beards hadn’t even tangled into knots yet, were huddled in a corner without any sense of dignity, sitting on some burlap sacks dragged from who knew where. Their four wide eyes were glued to the compass in Torin’s hands.
Inside the guiding compass, the rune-engraved needle spun wildly like a headless fly.
“Hey, Torin,” Gremm’s voice broke the gloom, puzzled. “You’re at least the young master of the Deepforge Clan. How come you’re carrying such a cheap piece of junk?”
He tried nudging his companion with his elbow, nearly knocking the compass from Torin’s grip.
Torin scrambled to protect it, snarling in frustration. “What young master? I’m nothing of the sort… Anyway, this came straight from my home! I might not care for hammer-swinging, but Deepforge craftsmanship—our slag is more reliable than this! Must be the guiding stone outside that’s the problem!”
“Pfft—!” Gremm almost burst into laughter, quickly clapping a hand over his mouth as his shoulders shook. “You make it sound like the guiding stone wasn’t made by the Deepforge Clan. You hit your head with a miner’s lamp, Torin? That thing is a ‘Three-Clan Relic’! Forged of Heart-of-the-Mountain adamant! The runes on it are old enough to be your great-grandfather’s tombstone! If that thing malfunctions, then hell’s frozen over!”
Torin rolled his eyes, silenced by the fact that Gremm’s words made sense.Scratching irritably at his scruffy stubble, he finally muttered another guess. “Then… then it must be that sneaky foxwoman we ran into earlier! Ever since we met her, nothing’s been right!”
This time, Gremm didn’t argue. He nodded. “That’s possible.”
Unfortunately, their theories didn’t help their current predicament. Trapped in a crumbling windmill, barely keeping themselves safe, they couldn’t exactly go confront this supposed foxwoman.
Outside the windmill, the tall wheat fields stretched beneath the starlight into mist and darkness. Within the rolling waves of wheat came strange rustling sounds—the movements of scarecrows and crows.
That was what had chased them inside.
Ordinary scarecrows might not storm the mill, but that didn’t mean they were safe.
Not to mention the “Farmer” with the pitchfork who came and went freely from the windmill—he could return at any moment. Simply waiting here was as good as suicide.
The longer they wasted, the deeper they would sink into the lower layers.
That was why they suspected the foxwoman.
They had only been inside the Dungeon for less than a day, and by rights should still be wandering in the relatively safe “outer edge.” But after meeting her, not only did the compass break, they had plunged straight down into the “Wheatfield Maze.”
Unheard-of accidents.
“What do we do now?” Torin moaned, face twisted in despair. “Am I, the future greatest adventurer destined to shake the continent, really going to rot in this moldy attic? What a miserable death!”
“The ‘greatest adventurer’ who dies on his second outing…” Gremm rolled his eyes. “Sounds like I’ve got it worse, following you to my death.”
“I paid you, didn’t I? Isn’t dying on the job a mercenary’s duty?” Torin shot back.
“Then dying on an adventure is an adventurer’s duty too!” Gremm snorted, then turned serious. “There is one option—we could try bribing the crows. They’re the eyes of the farm, but not all of them! You still carrying gems?”
Torin instinctively reached into his coat, pulling out a pigeon-egg-sized emerald, pure and sparkling. “Bribe the crows? That tavern drunk’s story was true?”
“Of course it’s true! Why else would I bring it up?” Gremm snatched the gem, savoring its smooth, warm weight before blurting out, “Damn! This is leagues better than the junk you paid me earlier!”
Without hesitation, he slipped the emerald into his inner pocket and whipped out a smaller, murkier ruby.
Torin watched the blatant switch without a twitch of his eyebrow. With a whole sack of gems like that emerald, losing one hardly mattered.
Holding the lesser ruby, Gremm stretched his arm out through the broken window. With deft fingers, he twisted the gem, catching what little starlight there was and flashing it into the wheat fields.
It didn’t take long. A sleek-feathered crow swooped down, snatched the ruby, then beat its wings and flew straight toward a distant patch of wheat!
“That way! After it!”
The two slid down the ladder and bolted outside.
Gremm charged in front, twin axes flashing. A scarecrow lurched from the stalks, only to be shredded into straw.
The fields erupted with rustling all around.
“This way!” Gremm barked, spotting where the crow had gone, and sprinted ahead.
Torin pounded after him, warhammer smashing another scarecrow into pieces.
“Hey! Are you sure following that black bird will really get us out?” he gasped.
“Not sure!” Gremm shouted back. “Some crows belong to the farm, some don’t. It’s a gamble!”
“What are the odds?”
“Fifty-fifty! Either it is, or it isn’t!”
“How is that fifty-fifty?!”
They raced through the maze of wheat, the rustling behind never fading. Suddenly, the dense stalks vanished, and the ground dropped out beneath them—they skidded to the edge of a sheer cliff!
Below lay endless blackness. Behind them, the scarecrows closed in.
“A bad bird?!” Torin’s heart sank.
“No! A good one! A damn good one!” Gremm shouted, pointing across.
The crow was perched on the gnarled branch of a dead tree across the ravine, the ruby still clutched in its beak. Its black eyes gleamed as it watched them.
Beyond the cliff lay thinner, lower wheat fields—the mark of the Dungeon’s edge zone!