She finishes selling and buying what she needs and is on her way to the troll camp again, no high expectations in her heart as usual, just her old instinct to do what she feels she must do.
The forest turns out to be more treacherous than expected, everything is very similar, Alice avoids confronting the animals and beasts on the way, the dry leaves that start to cover the forest floor make it almost impossible to find any trace, even from that big troll, the animal that attacked Alice without success, suddenly becomes docile, the strong smell makes Alice sure, she doesn't turn around, she is aware about the presence behind her.
The troll's guttural laughter reverberates in the surrounding trees, he makes silly, childish comments about how she plays in a funny way with the animals, Alice asks for help from the troll who doesn't quite understand but wants to help her only humanoid friend, he said that he's never seen a place she asks for, but there's a place at the entrance to a cave, there is near to a spring that animals love.
He thinks for a moment and walks off towards the place he mentioned, Alice follows him. The troll is very talkative, the animals are his only friends there so he can never talk to anyone, the troll lacks basic language skills which is not surprising, in a few hours they reach the place the troll talked about.
Without delay Alice recognizes that this formation is not natural, underneath the plants and sediments it is clear that this is not a cave, it is a long forgotten dungeon, she says goodbye to the troll who is watching her enter.
Alice is very cautious with every move she makes even before passing through the dungeon entrance, the partially visible inscriptions are pretty straightforward, something really bad has been sealed here, surely it must have already escaped, or there would be a door at the entrance, the traps here are the most dangerous and deadliest she's ever seen, whoever built this dungeon certainly did what they could to what what was locked here wouldn't come out.
At least not on its own, some of the traps were activated, someone very skilled and experienced haf been there, this time it shouldn't have been Merlyn, not at least the Merlyn Alice had heard about, the traps are too obvious even for her.
Alice doubts that most of people could survive to any of these traps, the inscriptions on the walls begin to become more useful, now they speak of the creature that had been sealed here, this was a dragon's lair, they sacrificed many lives to keep the dragon in its sleep as they built the dungeon around it.
A very strong pocket of magic must be nearby, not only from what is shown by the inscriptions, but Alice can already feel it, her body hair is already standing on end, as if she were full of static.
The walls grow colder as she progresses, and begin to glow with neon and fluorescence, mystical features rare these days, that pocket of magic would be the discovery of a life for the few wizards that exist today.
But with that troll out there, they would hardly have arrived at the entrance alive, if they could find the entrance, Alice was lucky to became friend with the troll, if she had tried alone she would have to gave up this message, and proceeded to where wind blows, as she has had to do a few times before.
Alice collects everything she can of value that she finds in the chambers of this dungeon, it won't help much anymore, a rare thing is that there aren't even bugs around here, just dust, so Alice stops by what should be the last door, there was only one hole left where the dragon must have escaped, or someone "subtly" entered to free him, not much was left in the alcove, the most important thing is that the message was there waiting for her.
The message starts with a magic formula she can't understand, it's a very archaic language, then comes Merlyn's "diary" page as usual and finally the instructions on where to find the next message, this diary page is the most monotonous of all, how can Merlyn be such a jerk in such a fantastic place? Alice asks herself scratching her head.
She writes down in her own diary everything she saw there and copies the inscription on the wall, she needs to find a wizard, her instincts are itching for her to read it aloud, it's impossible for her to do it, maybe with the help of a linguist from the imperial history academy could also decipher that magic, but they're a bunch of dumb, lazy snobs, they'd never come here, whether for danger or lack of treasure, they wouldn't mind the glittering neon and fluorescent lights from the walls, they would just complain about being cold as babies.
When Alice leaves, she notices that the lights on the walls behind her begin to go out, Alice darts through the corridors that look labyrinthine, not like the ones she walked through when she entered, but was there only one way? She thinks.
The lights start to go out in front of her too, and soon she stops running, she can't see what's ahead, Alice draws her sword to defend herself from the attacks of the beasts around her, relying only on reflexes and ears, the beasts don't seem to end, she feels her way with her feet as she slowly advances, until a large creature appears in front of her, its silhouette looks familiar, but she only has time to react against the onslaught of this huge beast, its huge claws sharp edges and protruding tusks reflect the low light in this extremely dark environment.
For the first time in a long time Alice can't directly hurt an opponent even using her sword, she passes without hesitation to hurt the creature's limbs, which little by little loses mobility and becomes more exposed, almost the entire body of the creature must be covered by something very hard that sometimes sounds like metal, sometimes sounds like wood, but little by little Alice is memorizing where she can fit the blows that really hurt, and in a few minutes the creature topples over strengthless.
Alice can already see a little better and does not hesitate to deliver the final blow, and almost immediately everything becomes clear, she is surrounded by animal bodies, and right in front of her, the troll, her friend, now lifeless.
She's sure she's fallen into a magical necroreality trap, she takes what she finds useful around, including the animals' bodies and leaves again, a little shaken, but she knows that necroreality spells aren't cheap illusions, it was killing or die.
Those bodies are proof that it was a necroreality magic, the animals and the troll itself are deformed as usual in this type of magic, Alice finally leaves doubting that she will ever be able to return here, but with the feeling of having lost a friend once more.