Sad Cavern: A Short Story

By Jennifer M. Baldwin

Anya stole her brother's armor and ran away. Or did she? Things are not what they seem in the cavern of Drys-Gul. As Anya and her fellow thieves descend into the depths of the mysterious cave, they confront not only the magic of Drys-Gul, the long-vanished wizard, but a creeping gloom that pervades every rock and tunnel below the earth. Can they escape this gloom, or will they succumb to it? Or is it already too late?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jennifer M. Baldwin
• Release date: Mar 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393982371

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Sad Cavern

Sad Cavern

a short story

Jennifer M. Baldwin

Phoenix and Fox Emporium

Sad Cavern

Copyright © 2020 by Jennifer M. Baldwin

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published in 2020 by Phoenix and Fox Emporium

First electronic edition, 2020

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Phoenix and Fox Emporium

www.phoenixandfoxemporium.com

All characters and events in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

For dungeon crawlers everywhere.

Sad Cavern

Drys-Gul was a gloom wizard.

What is a gloom wizard? This is the wrong question. To define a gloom wizard is only incidental. What a gloom wizard does is of much more consequence.

A gloom wizard does not practice some obscure form of sorcery; he (or she) is often an ordinary wizard to start, with typical training and typical powers. But the gloom wizard is not typical in all things. No, he (or she) is overcome with an unearthly, unwieldy spirit of melancholy. The anguish, despair, and unrelenting sadness of the person is such that a mystic sort of gloominess descends upon them, imbuing them with a supernatural, almost god-like state of melancholia, and it is this power which transforms the ordinary wizard into the gloom wizard.

After a time, this anguished state results in the dissolving of the human form into some other physical manifestation: a gnarled tree, a decrepit castle, a sulfur-breathing cave.

Go on, Gilfore, said Tark, go in. Or let me lead if you're too cowardly.

Gilfore shivered but he wouldn't let the dwarf take the first position; such a thing would give Tark the upper hand and Gilfore would never hear the end of it. But still, the bard didn't move. He hesitated on the threshold of the cavern and felt his stomach sink as he gazed upon the hideous face carved into the side of the mountain: its gaping jaws formed the entranceway to hidden tunnels below. The face was troll-like -- ugly and sad and misshapen -- and it made Gilfore wonder if such a path was really necessary. He also wondered who had carved this face around the cave opening. If they didn't go through the cave into the mountains,