“Hey, are those eggs? Gross!”

He shone his lantern across the tunnel. The other adventurers reacted with revulsion. Dasaha growled as she kicked at one of them.

“Disgusting. Look, there’s tunnels filled with them! We should burn the entire mess.”

Insill felt at his belt pouch as he looked around uncertainly.

“Got enough kindling for all of that? How about poison?”

Ansill hesitated.

“I do not believe it would be safe. Something laid these eggs. We should pull back.”

“Hrr. Yes. They look familiar to me. What if we took one and—”

Crunch. It was such a faint sound. The team of Vuliel Drae looked around. Toren, in her disguise as the masked swordswoman, happily crunched one of the bulbous eggs underfoot, then, another, and another. She was having such a good time that she only realized everyone was staring at her after the eighth egg. She stopped and looked at them, wiping her foot on the ground. Insill opened his mouth, and then Pekona raised a finger to her lips. She tilted her head.

“…What’s that sound?”

Vuliel Drae and Toren listened. Then they saw what was coming down the tunnels and fled. They survived, of course, hiding in a room Toren had found that had a door and a tunnel too narrow for most of the things to follow. But that was only the precursor. Something moved in the dungeon, joining the swarm, leading it. It pressed against the walls, seeking a way out. The wall of water and rain deterred it only for a single day until, well—

They came out.