WC: 2544

Etho explores the Fortress and uncovers more than what he intended to find.

-

The Fortress was an imposing structure made entirely out of red bricks, like the ones Etho had seen in the Black Market and the Ruins's broken door. Bridges expanded out from the main tower in the center. Some led to nowhere. Some led to smaller towers scattered around. At the other end of the Fortress, vibrant colors of deep crimson and bright teal peeked out from the otherwise monotonous color palette.

As soon as Etho stepped foot on the red brick path connecting to the Crossroads, his inner alarm system started ringing loudly, sensing a hostile environment. This wasn't safe territory, it seemed to say. Get out. While you still can.

It didn't help that he occasionally saw red bricks with skulls carved into them on the walls.

But he had invisibility on. He was safe. Nothing could see him...for the next 8 minutes.

So he'd best make the most of his time here.

Etho hadn't gotten far in when he heard the first hostile, unknown sound--a metallic clang of something nearby. Since he couldn't be seen by anything--even himself--he decided to brave it and get closer to the sounds.

Bad idea. He entered a small tower where the sounds were coming from on the way to the main tower and nearly got scorched by a rogue fireball that was shot from up above.

It hit the floor next to him and burst into a small explosion of flames, close enough that the fire burnt the edges of his new combat boots.

Etho jumped away, his heartbeat quickening.

Well, invisibility apparently didn't mean invincibility. That off-course fireball had nearly hit him, just out of luck.

He climbed a narrow, winding staircase that spiraled up inside the tower and emerged on the very top to see a fire-ridden rooftop. Every single inch looked like it had been badly burnt. Scorch marks stained the floor, and a cage of sorts was placed in the center. Actually, it was the only part that wasn't damaged by fire.

Metallic-looking creatures floated around the cage. They had golden rods the same color as their bodies hovering around them. They seemed to glow with a bright orange aura--kind of like the color of fire. Etho realized with a jolt that the odd cage in the center glowed with the same color.

As he watched, three more of those creatures appeared out of thin air. And they immediately started spitting out fireballs in every direction.

Etho ducked down back into the lower parts of the tower and left quickly before one of those fireballs actually found a target.

Checking to see if his invisibility was still on, he ventured deeper into the Fortress, towards the main tower and away from the relative safety of the Crossroads.

Seven minutes left of invisibility, maybe...? He had to be out soon, and he had to gather enough information about the Fortress that this wasn't all in vain.

Well, he had something already. But it wasn't going to help them in the slightest. More likely, it would mess up the whole ordeal.

He reached the main tower, which was similar to the smaller one he'd seen earlier, just that it was divided into more levels. Each floor he came across seemed to be its own little realm; they were so different from one another that Etho was surprised they were all in one single tower.

The ground floor was a brewing area of some kind. Etho had never made potions himself, but there was an old brewery in the slum sectors back at the Keep, and it looked something like this.

A line of brewing stands held different kinds of potions, but Etho wasn't sure which was which. The only ones he recognized were the bright pink health potions, which he took a few to stash on his utility belt for later. No invisibility potions, unfortunately.

There was also a patch of small red plants growing on brown sand, like the kind in Soul Sand Valley, under the staircase. Etho took a few of those, too, using his empty coin sack as storage. He wanted to take some of the sand, too, but he remembered the sinking feeling he felt back in the Labyrinth when he was walking in it, and he drew his hand away quickly.

The tower actually had one level downwards, like a basement. It was dark and dingy, and not as big or detailed as the floors above. The floor was covered in Soul Sand, and another rogue patch of wither roses was growing in the darkness.

Etho avoided the level entirely.

The second level--the one above the brewing area--looked like a vault of some kind, though it wasn't very protected. Blocks of solid gold were just stacked against the walls almost carelessly. Smaller gold ingots were placed on top. There was so much gold it was almost tacky. Why this much was sitting in the Fortress alone, Etho didn't know.

What he did know, though, was that an open room full of valuables like this reeked of hidden traps. It wasn't worth the risk to take even one ingot of gold. He avoided that level, too, going higher up the staircase.

The third and top level of the tower had another cage with those fireball-spitting monsters around it. Etho didn't even bother looking once he heard the clanging--with his luck, an off-course fireball would smack him in the gut, even with his invisibility on.

That was it for the main tower. Etho was expecting more, but he was thankful for the minimalism--he was on a timer here. 6 minutes left at the most.

One good thing about the Fortress: While almost all the towers had the same things in them and weren't very detailed, there were a lot of them--two dozen at the most, not counting the main tower. The spacing between each tower was pretty far out, too. The chances of running into the Ravager hiding here were slim because of this place's scale, which worked out in Etho's favor.

The next thing Etho wanted to see was the peek of vibrant colors he'd seen at the other end of the Fortress. On the way, he avoided all the smaller towers, now knowing what laid at the top. And--thankfully--he didn't run into any Ravagers on the way.

The Fortress's bridges cut off and transformed into hallways that led into a longer, closed-off structure. The sudden change was jarring--it had gone from open-air and tall towers to darkness and closed-off hallways. It reminded him of the Labyrinth in a way.

As he walked around, he occasionally heard bones clacking together--the telltale sound of skeletons. But instead of being accompanied with a bow being drawn taut, he heard the sound of a sword grating against the walls.

It was no surprise that the Fortress had a new variant of skeleton archers that no one knew about. Etho steered clear of the sounds, not wanting to get a look at them up close after the run-in with those other monsters earlier.

Maybe 5 minutes left of his invisibility, at most? Etho started to panic, realizing he had lost track of time.

But there was still one more area he wanted to scout out, so he forged on, hoping he didn't run out of time abruptly.

The hallway, thankfully, only led in one consistent direction, so he didn't get lost. Much like Soul Sand Valley, all the hallways that branched off quickly led to a dead end.

Etho followed the route, squinting in the darkness, before coming across the area with vibrant colors he'd seen earlier, which turned out to be a forest of sorts.

It was so different from the rest of the Fortress that he had to do a double-take. It wasn't just the colors that popped out at him, it was the foliage, too. Compared to the rest of the Fortress, which was dangerous but laid out in neat hallways and towers, this forest looked downright messy.

It was still dangerous, though, maybe even more than the towers. Because here, you couldn't see what was hiding between the trees.

The trees themselves were shaped in curvy, loopy shapes. Their leaves were bright red or aqua, and they drooped down from the branches like weeping willows. The bark had lines of brighter colors running through them, like veins on your arm. They seemed to move, too, which reminded Etho a little too much of soul sand.

Other plants were lying around, too. Grass the color of the leaves covered the ground. Tall teal vines snaked upwards. Shorter, smaller red plants grew on the ground, accompanied with turquoise grass. There were also patches of mushrooms, both in blue and red, sprouting up from the grass and growing on the tops of fallen tree trunks.

Etho knelt and pulled a few of the fungi out of the ground, stashing it in Zed's coin bag, which he hadn't given back after the Ruins Ravager chase. He also cut down one of the tall vines, which were thin but surprisingly stable.

When he brushed against the drooping leaves, he found that the leaves were actually very heavy and had a different texture than leaves normally do--more bumpy and rough than smooth. He wanted to take some of those, too, but they were firmly attached and he couldn't pull one off.

Underneath the trees, another kind of fungus was hanging from the branches. This one was yellow, almost gold, and pulsated with a gentle light. With a bit of effort, Etho pulled it out. It was still glowing as he placed it in his sack.

It took him a while to realize it, but this odd forest actually reminded him of the real Forest, back by the Keep. They didn't look anything like each other, but the sense of tense danger was the same--like you knew something was hiding, you just didn't know where.

Actually, the Fortress felt like an accumulation of all the other sectors of the Dungeon, save for the Keep. The Labyrinth's long hallways, Soul Sand Valley's dead ends, the Ruins's abandoned, empty feeling, the Forest's overgrown, out-of-control foliage...it felt familiar, but at the same time completely new.

Etho shook his head, trying to get back on topic. 3 minutes left on his invisibility, probably. He'd spent way too long here.

As he made his way out of the Fortress, the reality of the situation in front of him finally sank in. For years now, the Ravagers had been such a big part of the Dungeon that their existence almost felt normal, in a way. People were used to the constant fear and tension at this point.

But now, there was only one more Ravager left. Then they would all be gone. The Dungeon would go back to what it used to be before all this happened.

It felt surreal. And Etho had been helping kill the Ravagers. He'd been helping bring change to the Dungeon again.

But...no one knew that, outside of the Wanderers.

And there was no way the Wanderers would tell anyone. The whole group was supposed to be secret, after all. Once all of this was over, most people in the Keep would probably assume the Ravagers got themselves killed on their own.

The only one who might have suspicions was the person who had let loose the Ravagers himself. Tango would know better than assuming all of this was a miracle accident.

The Wanderers probably know all this, Etho realized. But he hadn't heard any of them complain about the situation. That made him feel worse.

Was he wrong for wanting validation for what he was doing? Some kind of recognition? Probably. But he couldn't help it. He wanted to be seen for what he was doing.

With a jolt, Etho realized that he could see his combat boots again--his invisibility had run out while he was in deep thought. He cursed his ignorance and dashed towards the Crossroads before whatever monsters he found earlier came and found him trespassing.

The trip back to the Ruins was, thankfully, uneventful. Etho entered the Wanderers' base camp again and was cheerfully greeted with congratulations from the others for killing yet another Ravager.

After all the commotion died down, Etho took a seat in Scar's corner of the room, where Grian and Zed were as well, and pulled out the two sacks with items from the Fortress he'd collected.

Showing them to the group, he said, "Thought you guys might want to take a look at these. They're all from the Fortress."

"I can't believe you went there on a whim," Zed groused.

Etho chucked Zed's coin sack at him, and it bounced off his chest. Zed opened it and pulled out one of the red plants Etho had stored inside, raising an eyebrow.

"That's nether wart," Grian commented, looking over Zed's shoulder. "One of the key ingredients to making potions."

"There was a brewery in one of the towers," Etho remembered.

"Right. Nether wart is used in almost every potion, if I'm remembering correctly. You need a steady supply of it if you want to make potions. Not that we can make any--all the ingredients you need are rare. Even this nether wart would be a vanity in the Keep."

Scar had pulled out the teal vines from the other coin sack and was holding a green crystal in his staff up to it. The gem pulsated slightly, and the vines responded remarkably quickly--maybe a bit too quickly--and started coiling around his staff tightly.

"Something tells me these'll come in handy," Scar remarked, gritting his teeth as he tried to tug off the tight vines on his staff. "Now, if only I could get them--under control--"

Grian laughed a bit at Scar's troubles, but that died down as the vines started growing on their own, with no help from Scar's green crystal. He joined Scar in trying to pull the vines off.

"They were easy to cut down when I first got them," Etho protested.

"Maybe my crystal made them stronger," Scar said, tugging one last time. The vines snapped in two with a sharp crack, and he held up one half triumphantly. "If I can control these, they might actually be useful in killing that final Ravager."

Grian took the other half of the teal vine and stretched it back and forth. "You mean, you can make these...wrap around the Ravager? And trap it?"

"Maybe?" Scar said vaguely. His tone went higher at the end of the word, making it sound like a question. "Like how they wrapped around my staff? It could work..."

Etho didn't like the hesitation in his voice, but he didn't say anything. Instead, he pulled out his map from his utility belt and rolled it out on the floor. "Do you guys have a quill or something?" he asked the rest of the group.

Zed handed him a white feather and an ink bottle from a barrel nearby. Etho dipped the quill into the bottle and started sketching out the Fortress's layout in more detail on the map, starting with the towers. Grian and Zed watched him lay out the bridges while Scar kept experimenting with the plants he had gotten from the Nether.

"Here. While Scar works on getting those plants under control, I'll tell you about what I found in the Fortress. We can start planning out how we're going to kill that final Ravager."

-

I love doing worldbuilding chapters, they're always a lot of fun to write :D Especially when it comes to interpreting Decked Out as an actual universe and not a closed-off area where all the areas blend into one another quickly

A bit of backstory behind the Fortress: I imagine it as a kind of varied, more dangerous Nether Fortress, with different rooms and more Blaze spawners. The Warped and Crimson forests blend in together (which I've actually seen in a Minecraft world I've had before, it looks super cool) in one area

I didn't mean for the Fortress to be a mix of the other sectors in the Dungeon, but I thought that detail was nice so I kept it in ^^;

More news: This fic will be posted soon on AO3! All the chapters are up to date there, so you can read it there if you prefer that site :) I'll let y'all know when it's all out!

Until next update!