"Do you have my silk?"

  Jeremy stood in the dungeon passageway, shaking and panting too badly to speak, but he made a semblance of a nod and tossed the spool of spider silk in Clown Lord's direction.

  Clown Lord picked it up, brushing off the webbing and spider guts, caressing it like one might a long-lost lover. “Excellent. I am pleased.”

  The adrenaline wore off and Jeremy started to hurt, and this time he had no healing potion for the pain.

  “I see you are eager to receive your reward,” Clown Lord said, mistaking Jeremy's exhaustion and pain for impatience. “Don't worry, little adventurer, I am an honorable monster. Come with me.”

  Jeremy followed Clown Lord down dungeon hallways, exhausted and sore, every part of his body hurt. It occurred to him that he was following a 7-foot tall monster through a dungeon and he'd just survived a battle with invisible, poisonous, giant spiders. He imagined telling his mother about this and wondered what she might think. It was all he could do not to burst out laughing.

  “Let's start with the question then,” Jeremy said when he'd calmed down enough to talk. “How do I get out of this dungeon without going to the seventh floor?”

  Clown Lord didn't answer. Jeremy followed him into The Fun House and up to the loft where they'd spoken previously. Clown Lord put the silk in his cabinet, pulled out the charmed boots, tossed them over to Jeremy's side of the table, and sat down.

  Jeremy activated Identify.

  Charmed boots. Charmed for Sneak and Durability. An item you can desperately use.

  What was it with the dungeon and deprecating comments?

  Jeremy picked up the boots. They looked way too small to fit his feet, but when he tried them on, they expanded to fit perfectly. Wearing them felt like being surrounded by a cloud of silence. He felt like he could play a trombone now and not get noticed.

  “Your question,” Clown Lord said. “You want to know if there's a way to leave the dungeon that doesn't involve you traveling to the seventh-floor portal?”

  “Yes,” Jeremy said.

  “Answering honestly and to the best of my ability.” Clown Lord grinned in a way that showed his many shark-like teeth and made Jeremy back away. “No,” he chuckled. “No, there is not. There is one way out of this dungeon. That is to go to the seventh floor and leave through the portal in the center. There is no other way out of this dungeon. Even in death, you remain part of this dungeon for the rest of its existence.”

  “I'm going to die here,” Jeremy said, feeling hopeless and wanting to cry. He'd only been here three days, and he'd lost count of the times he'd almost been killed.

  “Most certainly,” Clown Lord said, looking far too cheerful, and making a slurping noise as he sucked air into his teeth. “But first, I have a second quest for you.” He paused for effect. “In a distant corner of the first floor of the dungeon, there is a Big.”

  “A Big?” Jeremy asked.

  “We are in The Children's Dungeon. There are no giants in The Children's Dungeon, but there is one Big. The Big is very strong and hard to kill with normal weapons, but he's dumber than a box of rocks. For unknown reasons, this Big collects magical items. I'm not sure why. He's too dumb to use them, he just hoards them in his lair. One of those items is a magic loom. You will sneak into his lair and steal this magic loom for me. Because it's magic, it will be small enough to fit in your pack.”

  “What does this loom look like?” Jeremy asked.

  “A wooden rectangle with strings up and down it. If you complete this quest, your reward is this.” Clown Lord pulled a short sword from his cabinet, unsheathed the sword, and threw it. The sword missed Jeremy's head by less than an inch, embedding itself in the wall behind him. When Jeremy got over the shock, he used Identify.

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  Charmed Short-sword Named Arcellia's ToothPick. Charmed for Durability, Ultra Sharp Edge, and Accuracy. Another item you could desperately use.

  “What else?” he said, remembering his previous quest.

  Clown Lord reached into his cabinet again and pulled out a suit of leather armor. “This leather armor is nothing special, but it's much higher quality than what you're wearing, and it's self-repairing.” Clown Lord smirked. “Your reward will be two items whose previous owners no longer need them.”

  Jeremy did Identify.

  High quality leather armor. Charmed for self repair. You should take this quest.

  YOU HAVE BEEN ASSIGNED YOUR SECOND QUEST!

  Steal the Big's magic loom!

  If successful your reward will be one charmed short sword and one charmed suit of leather armor. Items no longer needed by their previous owners. Failure means death. Refusal of this quest means death.

  Accept? Yes/No

  Jeremy selected Yes. “I need two days to recover from the injuries I gained on my first quest.”

  Clown Lord sniffed, “I suppose I'll have to wait. Will you be joining us for dinner? We're having roast spider. Not as good as adventurer, but very tasty.”

  Jeremy shook his head. “No, thank you. I'm not hungry.”

  “Your loss,” Clown Lord said, leaving the loft.

  Jeremy suddenly realized he was thirsty, having failed to drink anything since morning. He grabbed his water bottle from his pack and drained it, emptying it again and again. When he'd had enough water, he crammed a dungeon ration into his mouth and activated Sneak, then used Identify on Clown Lord's large bone chair.

  Clown Lord built this chair from the bones of monsters he killed in previous battles.

  He was able to identify Clown Lord's large chair while using Sneak, but as before, two skills used up a lot of mana. This was a problem he'd have to work on. In the meantime, he'd gained two days of relative safety. Time to train.

  He activated Sneak and with a groan, got up and skulked through The Fun House. With Clown Lord around, the other clowns shouldn't attack him. Probably. The roast spider smelled like buttered lobster and made his mouth water. He almost wanted to join them for dinner, but even if he was willing to eat roast spider, could he eat it without being poisoned?

  His determination didn't last long. Spending the day fighting for his life had worn him out. Back in the loft, he used his dungeon candy to increase his poison resistance to 2, then he curled up in a corner while the clowns ate their dinner, and he was out.

  ***

  Early the next morning, a monster clown woke up to see a boy wandering around The Fun House. To a monster clown, this meant one thing. Breakfast. It got up, following the boy as he hid behind their cannon. The cannon was very useful. When occasion demanded, twenty clowns would pick up the cannon and smash things with it.

  Creeping behind the cannon, the clown found the boy was gone, but it heard a faint noise from the other side of the cannon. The boy must have crawled underneath.

  The clown bent down to look under the cannon. Jeremy, hiding in the shadows nearby, had made the noise by throwing a dungeon ration. He crept up behind the clown and stabbed it in the back of the neck as hard as he could.

  “Rarrr.” The clown tried to stand up, bumping its head on the cannon as it did so. Jeremy used the distraction to yank out the knife and stab it again. This time the clown went down, its clown nose making a mournful honk as it fell face-first to the floor and stayed there.

  He couldn't help feeling a little bad for the clown and hoped Clown Lord wouldn't mind him killing it. The clown had been trying to eat him though, and the dungeon would soon bring the clown back. So no harm done.

  When the clown vanished, reabsorbed by the dungeon, Jeremy received 12 dc, and Sneak went up to 6, but no healing potion. What was wrong with this stupid dungeon? His hands were scraped and his whole body ached from the day before. Figured he didn't get one.

  He felt something moving behind him. Without thinking, he dove under the cannon. A wind went by as something tried to grab him from behind and missed. There was a giggle and the sound of footsteps running away. Jeremy shivered and did the same, sprinting to a shadowy location nearby and activating Sneak. He looked around, trying to locate the giggling clown. Not finding anyone, he waited until everything was still before heading to the loft.

  A clown came creeping up to the loft, peeked inside, and saw Jeremy's cloak next to the table, artfully arranged with help from Jeremy's backpack to make it look like Jeremy was sleeping under it.

  The clown entered the loft with a quiet giggle.