There used to be a challenge every young teenage boy in Woodsten undertook. Sometime between ten and thirteen, you had to dive into the old well that was used for cattle and swim as deeply as possible. We called it the abyss because it was deep and cold, and once you kicked underwater a few feet, it was dark. I've never been to hell, but I earned my rite of passage by diving into the abyss.

  The tradition was, if you didn't last thirty seconds diving then you hadn't become a 'man' yet. It was one of those stupid rituals bored village kids come up with. I can see it now, but then it was everything. What I hadn't realized, because no one told me, was that everyone just dove below the surface, and hung on to a ledge six feet down. They'd count to thirty and then float up, newly appointed men.

  Instead, what I believed was the story they told all the younger kids to scare them from trying. That the test was to keep swimming as long as possible, until you couldn't stand it, and then float up. If you lasted thirty seconds, then you'd made it.

  I think they refrained from telling me to make me fail, to prove I was a loser. I jumped in and swam deeper. Immediately the light from the top of the well vanished. Any moment my hand scraped against the side of the well, making me lose momentum, I'd just kick off with my foot. Scrape it against the stones that lined the well. I went deeper. The water was dark, and the only real thing that separated up from down was my relentless push to prove myself by kicking and pulling myself down.

  I lost count quickly, but as I eventually released the air I had in my lungs, and began fighting to refuse a gasp of water, I saw it. Just a little light. The slight brush of a current pulling at my clothes. My lungs had screamed, but my psyche said one more kick, just a little deeper, toward the light. It bobbed in the abyss, beckoning me on.

  Leo saved me that day. He was watching my trial, and when one kid laughed at how stupid I was, he dived in after me.

  I would have swum after that light.

  Three years later, Tomi Elger did. Turned out the well has an underground river feeding it. Never found his body, even after they sent for a mage. I bet he saw the light.

  Officially, the boys don't test each other like that anymore. They boarded up the old well and put a padlock on it. It's only used during shearing season when the herds come in for the annual event. I'm sure no one goes into the abyss anymore. Tomi might have been a loser, but everyone loved him.

  Cole, snap out of it! I couldn't help staring at the pool. It was dark, which made little sense, since it was in the middle of the desert. It should have been salt-crusted, or reflecting the sky. Instead, it looked like the abyss. I swear I saw a light flickering in the depths.

  "Tandy, you've got to have a better plan than this." I found myself saying, looking at the water numbly.

  The barrier had shrunk us, driving us to the middle of the oasis. We wiggled between tight-knit, overgrown cacti to find a small grove of trees encircling a crystal clear, dark pond. Ash had already tested the water, and while tasting of minerals, the water seemed okay. It wasn't briny or brackish and didn't have a filmy scum on it.

  Even though my gills ached for the water, I just didn't trust it.

  "Cole, if you wanted a better plan, you shouldn't have put me in charge." Her voice was sharp enough to cut steel. She was right. I should have made the decision. I could have taken charge. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Marta’s old kitchen chastisement haunted me from The Ram’s Horn.

  I looked around. Ash was staring at the surface of the lake. Tandy was scowling at me with her arms crossed. Meredeath had retreated to the shadow of the carriage. I tried catching her eye, but she was decidedly avoiding me.

  I needed Leo, he was always good at sharing an eye roll about Tandy. Maybe that was the point. He wasn’t here anymore, and it was time to grow up. I straightened my back, trying to find a new posture in our altered party. I evaluated the rest of our little caravan.

  Our ladies looked bedraggled. Their dresses were not suitable for cross-country travel. Just on the short hike in to the water, they'd both torn their sandals and picked up multiple snags on their dresses.

  "Do you know how much this Eslastra Ellangarde costs? Probably more than your entire village!" I'd be miserable too if I were stuffed into a dress that elongated my neck. The mistress in charge turned out to be not much older than their young counterpart, maybe twenty. I would never understand how nobility forced these decisions on their youth.

  The young woman in the emerald dress had suffered a few cuts that went through the billowing sleeves of her dress. If we'd had time, I would have insisted we grab some other options from their luggage, but in the twenty minutes I'd spent with them, I wasn't sure they had anything more suited to the desert than their nightgowns.

  "How are you holding up?" I asked Argin, pointedly ignoring the ladies.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  She smiled, her face tight.

  "We're awful. This is the worst Hunt I've ever been to." Grandpa complained. I didn't blame the guy; his foot was in rough shape. I'd bandaged it, and put a healing poultice on it, but what he really didn't need was to have to go into a pool of water to enter the dungeon.

  "If I had anything for the pain, I'd give it to you," I said sincerely.

  He lifted his face. "I know, son. This isn't your fault."

  It was the kindest thing he'd said since we'd met him. I'm not sure what gave my thought away, but the man immediately soured and spat.

  "You're going to kill us with this harebrained idea from the slug."

  I'd placed Richard on a rock well away from our new friends. We'd blamed him for our next stunt, even if it was my [Dungeon Delver] skill telling me that the dungeon we needed to enter was inside the pool. It wasn't just me, though. The bubble around the enclosure was closing an inch, a foot, every thirty seconds, and it centered on the pool. We had no choice.

  The trees across from us were a variety, but at least three of them were Heltenic aspens full of leaves ready to cut us into ribbons.

  "I'll go first," I said. "He's my slug, so it's only right I risk it first." Puffing out my chest with fake confidence, I walked towards the edge of the water, letting my bare feet dip in. Part of me yearned to dive in. I had gills, so I had nothing to fear from going into the pool unless there were flesh-eating carp in there.

  Peering into the water, I couldn’t help but be mesmerized because I could see only a foot or two deep.

  There is no monster in the pool.

  "How the hell do you know?" I hissed. Richard sat on his stone, and undulated forward, sand sticking to his slime as he approached the water. He looked at it, tentacles reaching forward as though he was communing with the water. He slid forward, his slime an aqua color that pooled out in front of him as he skated across the water.

  "Can that yellow banana asshat walk on water?" Meredeath was still steamed that Richard had led us to the oasis, effectively trapping us here. She'd insisted the oxen could have made it if the 'lightning strike' at the barrier hadn't cooked them.

  "Oh, that's cool," Ash added, not helping the situation. "It's like he's Jesus, right? He's the one that walked on water?"

  If there were anything hungry in these waters, it would snap me up.

  The slug moved quickly across the water, as though he were skating on ice. The aqua-tinged slime stayed on top of the water, buoyed by some unseen force.

  See, nothing to be concerned over.

  The water rippled in an arc around Richard before I could utter a word of warning. Two giant jaws sprang out from either side of him and snapped closed. A reptilian swish of a tail sent the creature down into the depths.

  "Richard!" Meredeath yelled, as though her voice could carry underwater.

  It's fine. I remember now. This is how you get to the dung—" Richard's mental voice silenced as he must have entered the dungeon. Either that or he died, but I was pretty sure I'd get a death notification if my 'owner' suddenly passed away. Who knows, with his [Immortality] his death might spur on an eclipse or something.

  Meredeath was throwing rocks into the pool, and Ash was looking to join her. Tandy sidled up to me.

  "What's the word?"

  "I think Richard found the dungeon entrance," I whispered, pointing at the expanding ripples. If saying the wrong thing was a skill, Tandy’s expression told me I’d leveled up. But I really didn’t want to tackle what our newly minted adventurers were going to think about the situation.

  "Well, that's just lovely." Tandy was still pissed at me, but she arrived at the same conclusion. We both looked at the two women and the grandfather. This was going to be hard. The barrier had reached the outer part of the cacti, and whole cacti were getting ripped up and sent into the sky.

  Then again, the situation would probably convince them.

  "The real question," I murmured, "is what a water-based dungeon is doing in the middle of the desert?"

  “I'm more worried about how any of us, much less them—” She nodded towards our new guests. “—Are going to survive an ancient dungeon capable of chasing us into its maw.”

  For a second my mind flashed to the tidemaw, waiting at the center of its swamp to suck in prey across the bog. This dungeon was a hunter.

  "Well, I'm going after Richard," I said the words quickly, grabbing my pack. Tandy looked at me for a moment, and as realization hit, I sprinted toward the pool. I did not want to have anything to do with herding or convincing anyone to enter the pool. It was time to prove myself, so I just went for it.

  I swam out into the middle, all the while everyone shouted at me like I was crazy from the shore. Instead of swimming across the pool, I started angling down. I hadn't really understood until that moment how upset my gills had been in the desert. As the blissful cold water slid between the slits on my neck, euphoria overcame me. I stopped swimming and just sank into the water’s embrace.

  The giant sea creature meant to ferry me to the dungeon swam up beside me, a giant eye on the side of its face examining me. I gave it a reassuring nod, knowing I’d find my way down. I reached to loosen my hammer from my belt, belatedly remembering its absence. The monster, as though understanding my mission, let me go.

  This descent held none of the anxiety of the abyss of my childhood. I could breathe easily. In choosing this, I didn't have to prove anything. The water grew darker until I'd sunk at least thirty, forty feet. No current pulled at my hair. The water was still, and endless.

  I felt at peace. The emerald ring on my finger warmed on my hand, as though it, too, missed the caress of water against its surface.

  Down and up were meaningless. There was only darkness.

  The ring pulsed in my hand, drawing my attention. In the distance was a light, and as all humans, as all prey of the dungeons, I swam towards it.

  I didn't have Leo to pull me back this time.

  For the latest slug-related updates - follow me on:

  Facebook -

  Instagram -

  Patreon - - free tiers grant access to the discord

  Podcast as a frequent host-

  Podcast who every other Tuesday talking about LitRPG and Progession fiction-

  Thanks for reading!