Our newly formed couple explores a dungeon together...! Really proud of this piece. I liked the first one a lot, but didn't expect to get attached to the characters like I did. Tried to focus a lot on developing their characters and voices, as well as expanding on the world they live in. Let me know what you think!

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The next morning, over breakfast, Sun asked, “So you explore those ruins, right? Do you ever find anything there that’s too large to bring back…?”
“Is this some sort of rhetorical question? Look around your house. How many of the things in here do you think you could carry out on your own? How much of it would you be willing to haul for days to the nearest city?” Leicond replied.
“Have you ever had any mages explore ruins with you?”
“And put myself out of a job? No, thank you.”
Sun looked expectantly at him.
“Sun.”
“Yes?” he reached over and set his hand on the deer’s.
“Do you know how dangerous these places can be?”
He smiled.
“I’m not sure you understand what you’re asking for.”
“How else will I find out!”

Two days later, they departed the city, and after nine, arrived at a ruins site deep in a forest. The entrance was in a small clearing, set into a natural hummock.
“First things first. You do not fuck around in here. If I tell you to stop, you stop. If I tell you to hop, you ask how high. Understand? Your life could be on the line. When we’re moving, please stay at least four paces behind me. Do you understand me?” Leicond looked intensely at Sun.
“Yeah, sure. Can I kiss you, by the way? For good luck.”
Leicond gestured to a set of armor in the entrance, its breastplate staved in, its skeletal occupant decades dead. “Luck will not make a difference if you trigger one of those. But, yes, you may kiss me.”

They proceeded into the dungeon, Leicond leading. Sun followed the given directions, but still poked curiously at everything he was permitted to.
“Hey, this place is kind of boring. Why are all of these traps mundane? Isn’t there anything I can do?” Sun asked Leicond while he was elbow deep in a trap’s mechanism..
“If there was something for you to do, I would’ve asked you to do it. Please just stay back there. This sword trap will disembowel you if it goes off.”
“I probably didn’t even need those bowels anyway! They’re basically just dead weight. Come on, let me help! I’m good at understanding things. I love to understand things!”
Leicond let out a deep sigh. “Not the one I’m working on. You can play with the next one.”
Minutes later, they were standing a span back from another weapon trap. Sun was using magic to manipulate the pressure plate trigger. Intermittently, a massive axe head swung out horizontally, cleaving through the hall at chest height.
Leicond watched dispassionately. “I didn’t mean literally play, but I’m glad you’re having fun with the deadly trap. Do you mind if I disarm it now?”
Without looking back. Sun started walking forward.
“Wait, Sun, stop! SUN!”
He proceeded across the pressure plate.
Nothing happened.
“Look, see. The trap only goes off once each time the plate is depressed. It makes a lot of sense. If the trap didn’t kill its victim on the first strike, a second strike probably wouldn’t do much good. And of course you wouldn’t just want the trap swinging repeatedly if a body falls onto its trigger. Its really good design! Luckily, it means we can bypass the trap easily with magic! At the time it was created, there probably weren’t a lot of other ways to proceed past it. I’ll bet you could get the same effect if you could land a heavy rock on the plate, though it might be hard to get it to land just so. Or even find one in here.” He looked around him. “There’s far fewer loose boulders in here than I imagined, as a matter of fact. Weird.”
Leicond clung to his arm, breathing heavily. “Sun. You are very intelligent. Do you think that maybe you could tell me all that before you walk into a trap next time?”
Sun looked at him, realizing how panicked he looked. “Yes. Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The two proceeded through the dungeon. Blissfully, Sun didn’t ask to experiment on any more traps, though they used his technique to more quickly bypass several additional weapon traps.
Eventually, Sun began speaking again. “So, whats the deal with these places.” He gestured to the hallway they were in. “Its a long corridor full of traps. I understand that dungeon is a colloquialism, but there’s not even any rooms. For whom and by whom was it built? What is it’s purpose?”
“You know they aren’t all exactly like this, right? We’ll know for sure at the end, but I believe this one is what I call a Retreat. They tend to be on the safer side, and I thought you would find it more interesting. Though you’re making me begin to reconsider…” He sent the curious ferret a sideways glance. “I’m not completely certain, though. My theory is that its a hideaway or semi-stronghold. Once we finish with the hallway, we’ll probably find an apartment. There’s also usually a second exit from there, or a sometimes a shortcut that comes out far closer to the entrance, so its occupants don’t have to traverse the entire hall.”
“If there’s a shortcut, why didn’t we look for that?”
“No guarantee there would be one. As well, they’re usually secured far better than these hallways. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a Retreat who’s second exit would’ve been easier or faster to find and bypass.”
“That still doesn’t explain why they exist, though. From whom were they retreating from?”
“You’re the mage, you tell me from whom you would retreat.” he poked fun at the ferret’s speech.
The ferret glared. “This wasn’t made by a mage.”
“What? How can you even tell that?”
“See how all the stones are different? This one bulges out, but there’s no others that do? An artifact of working with your hands. A mage’s bricks would be far more uniform. And probably smaller, though that isn’t as damning piece of evidence.”
“That’s really it?”
“No, that’s just the one I wouldn’t expect you to know. The obvious reason is that the stone isn’t local. These bricks are all andesite, but most of the stone in this area is granite. This was clearly built with money, not magic.”
“That doesn’t mean a mage didn’t live here, though.”
“That’s true, but all the traps are mundane. I would expect a mage to protect his lair with magical wards. They don’t last forever, but they easily last one’s entire life. They probably built this expecting to use it for longer than one lifetime, which is what I’d expect from nobility.”
“If you know so damn much why are you asking me,” Leicond shot.
“Well, I didn’t know any of that before we walked in! But you’re right, why would the explorer know anything I don’t,” he rolled his eyes.

More progress eventually found them standing in a doorway. It opened into a square room, 10 spans on a side and a few spans high; the bottom was a chasm. There was a matching doorway on the far side.
Sun grabbed Leicond’s arm. “L-Leicond. Are you seeing this? This is real right?”
“Yes, yes, I’m seeing it. Its real. Whats the big deal?”
“Do you see this a lot!?”
“Occasionally. I’ve seen a handful before. What’s the big deal?” he repeated.
“Do you not see it!? Look! Do you see where the chasm meets the room?”
Leicond squinted into the room. “I… No, I don’t. It just. My eyes can’t find... it…”
“Exactly! It’s not here! I mean, its obviously here, but its not here!”
“Sun, can you be more clear?”
“This chasm is somewhere else! Do you see how cool this is? Nobody knows how to do this anymore! See, its not just plain translocation. But maybe that’s part of it? You’d still be transported, of course, but it then it would just look like a room…” he muttered several more sentences under his breath. “How much rope do we have?”
“About 15 spans. I asked the shopkeeper for that many, but… his arms are a bit shorter than either of ours, so it may be a bit less.”
“Damnit! This chasm is at least 30 or 40 spans deep. Can we go back for more rope?”
“Sun.”
“I have a theory about how this works!”
“Sunhunter.” the ferret’s full name got his attention. “We’re not going back for more rope. But if you can use magic and tie off the rope on the far side, I’ll let you tell me your theory.”
“What if I just float you over?”
“Do you remember that time you tried to take my pants off?”
Sun looked sheepish. “… Okay. Um. You’ll need to teach me how to tie the knot first, though.”
After a short instructional session, Sun gestured, and the rope snaked across. He muttered under his breath and the rope knotted itself around a sconce on the far side. Leicond secured it tightly on the near side, and they shimmied across.
“Can you undo the reverse side?”
“Um. Maybe. If you used the same knot, I think I can.” Sun undid the original side and re-coiled the rope as it came back across, returning it to Leicond’s bag.
“Would you like to tell me your theory now?”
“Yes! So, I suspect there’s some sort of two part item. You make a locus for the spells and then carefully split it in half. You throw one side down the chasm or pit or abyss or what have you. The other piece, you bring back here. It would probably need to be installed in the ceiling by a mage, since they would need to map it to the room. Then, they power it, and it joins the two places!”
“Sounds neat. What would happen if multiple different places were bound to the same chasm?”
“Hard to say. That isn’t in our archives, and nobody has bothered to do any research on this kind of thing. Its a far less reliable way of moving things, and we can achieve the same effects with simple, on demand translocations. Speaking of which, why did you travel overland to see me, instead of letting the mage’s guild transport you to the capital?”
Leicond stopped and took his hands, facing him. “Life is about the journey, Sun, not the destination.” Sun glared at him and he grinned back. “Your guildmates told me it’d be more fun to make you wait, and I didn’t know what a beautiful destination I was heading for.” He leaned in and kissed the ferret. “Come on, lets keep moving. These chasms are usually pretty close to the end.”

Half an hour later, the hallway deposited the two into a circular room. Unlike the sconces in the hallway, the ones here still held candles, which the pair lit. Rounded benches hugged the walls, and a large, circular rug spanned most of the room, fountains of dust kicked up from it by every step. Cursory exploration showed doorways lead into quadrants. Two were apartments, another was kitchens and baths, and the fourth was a magical lab.
“I don’t usually stay overnight in these, but I suspect you’ll want to set up camp. Shall we see if the beds are intact?” Leicond asked.
In the first set of rooms, the bed was decayed, a leg missing. In the second, there a massive, four poster bed stood tall; sheets and blankets were tucked away in a fragrant, cedar chest, and they seemed to be in good enough condition after a quick shake out.
“Hey, Sun. I just noticed something weird. There’s no vermin here.”
“Whats weird about that?”
“What do you mean? They’re pests precisely because they get into everything. So why aren’t they here?”
“Huh? Did you see any vermin in my house? Or in the mage’s guild? I would ask if you noticed any in the palace, but you probably haven’t been there…”
Leicond glared at him. “Get to the point.”
“We magically repel them. I think the ward here is actually going, though. I’ve been able to hear something keening since we passed the chasm. I kind figured you could hear it as well. I can probably fix it if we can find the locus.”
“It already lasted a few centuries.” he shrugged. “Why bother?”
“It’ll be easier for me to sleep.”
“Where do they usually put them?”
“Somewhere central. Somewhere high.”
“Perhaps the chandelier in the hub?”
“As good a place as any to start looking!”
The two returned to the hub, and lowered the chandelier to the ground, puffing up a cloud of dust. Sun found the locus in a bag tied to the top. He took it out and held it.
It was flat and made of stone, about the size of his palm. One side was inscribed with symmetrical glyphs, the other was smooth. He used both hands to flip it a few times, squinting at it as he did. He moved one hand to the side, squeezing like he was grabbing something flat, before continuing to rotate the object one-handed with a dexterous motion that must’ve taken years to master.
He sighed in relief as he put it back on the chandelier. “Much better. Since the targeting is so broad, that’s usually the first part to fail when the power gets low. The rest is pretty weak anyway, on account of it being far easier to repel mice and bugs than us anthros. Still annoying as hell, though.”
Leicond patted him on the back. “There, there. I can understand how frustrating it would be to discover that you’re closer to being vermin than I am.” Sun shot a look up at the deer, but was immediately disarmed by his warm smile. “How about we go check out the kitchen?”

The kitchen was incredibly well stocked. It held an alchemical stove, a full set of fine knives, silver flatware, porcelain plates and bowls, and every kind of preparation tool the two could imagine. The pantry was in surprisingly good condition; fresher ingredients had withered away to nothing far in the past, but magic had preserved hardier ingredients, root vegetables, cured meats, flour, sugar, oil, and other staples looking as if they’d be delivered the day before.
The entire place was replete with dust.
Sun nudged his partner. “Hey. I’ll cut you a deal. I clean this place up, you cook us something delicious for dinner.”
“Deal.”
Sun gestured. All across the room, dust lifted, quickly siphoning into a hole set in the far wall. In less than a minute, the kitchen was spotless. “Oh! And this should help, too.” He snapped his fingers several times, candles around the room sparking to life. “Have fun! I’m very hungry.” He patted the deer on the back and walked out of the room.
“Wait. Hey, wait! That isn’t fair!” His words fell on deaf ears as the mustelid left to explore the laboratory.

An hour and a half later, Leicond retrieved Sun from the lab, peeling him away from whatever weird artifact he was studying. He led him to a set table, and set a light colored soup down in front of it. Small chunks of carrots and potatoes were floating in it.
“It looks incredible!”
“Thank you. This has made me wish I’d spent more time in the past raiding the kitchens instead of the labs. I wish I could take some of these knives home with me.”
“Why can’t you?”
“I-I figured you would want the space for magical artifacts…”
Sun smiled and set his hand over the deer’s. “Don’t worry. We’ll have space to take the knives.”
He clasped the hand back and smiled back. “Thank you. Have you found anything cool in the lab?”
“YES!” he shouted, blushing as he realized he’d accidentally yelled. “Yes. Yes, lots of cool stuff.” He looked across the table expectantly.
The deer stared back across at the ferret; his excitement was barely contained, like a puppy waiting to have its ball thrown. Leicond tried to sit quietly, but couldn’t suppress his smile watching the ferret use every last ounce of his self control to hold his tongue. “Go on. Tell me about what you found.”
“There’s so many different things! The first one I picked up is really weird. It looks similar to items I’ve used before, but when I pour force into it, it leaks out like a sieve! I’ve never seen anything act quite like it at all. I haven’t been able to discern if it’s broken or its use is just inscrutable to me.” His sentence was interspersed with spoonfuls of soup, as continued describing other artifacts he’d poked at. Leicond was impressed by his ability to hork down his soup and talk at the same time.
As they finished the soup, Leicond took their bowls to the other room, returning with two crocks, setting one down in front of Sun.
“Two courses?” he asked, sounding amazed.
“Two courses.” he replied, smirking. He stepped back out, returning with a bottle and two crystal chalices. “And wine.”
The crock held a meat pie, tender, finely chopped vegetables and meat, the crust perfectly golden and flaky. The dry, red wine paired wonderfully with it, and Sun tore into his meal with gusto, continuing his explanation of the things he’d found in the lab.
As they finished, Leicond took the crocks away and returned with more plates, glasses, and wine. He set down a small piece of cake and poured the wine, a sweet white.
Before he could return to his own seat, Sun grabbed his arm. “Leicond, wait…” he pulled him down into a kiss. “Thank you.”
He smiled back as he took his own seat. “You’re welcome. I’ll put it on your tab.”
They ate dessert in relative silence, soaking in each other’s presence. The two cleaned up together, and retired to their bed, laying down, tangled in each other’s arms.
“How long do you usually spend in these things?”
“Not long. Rarely longer than the time it takes me to stuff my pack full of interesting looking things. I spend far longer traveling between ruins to city than I do inside.”
“Just wondering if you ever spent the night in one of these beds before. Or even explored the rooms at all.”
“I go through them looking for artifacts, but that’s it. I’ve usually used my own bedroll in the hub. I don’t like sleeping in the ruins at all, though.”
“Why not?”
“Cold. Sometimes there’s monsters. And since you told me about them, I’m beginning to think a lot had those malfunctioning pest things.”
“Well, don’t worry. I’ll keep you warm, protect you from any monsters, and never annoy you.” Sun’s paws traced patterns in the chest fur of his adventuring partner.
“Oh, will you? I didn’t see you bring a weapon, and I haven’t heard of all too many battle mages…” the deer teased.
“In that case, you’ll just have to protect me, my brave, strapping explorer!” He pulled the deer closer. “I’ll still do my best to keep you warm, though.”
“And the annoying thing?” he petted him on the head.
“We’ll see…”
Sleep found them not long after, wrapped tightly in each other’s arms.