Once back on the main path, the party continued deeper into the dungeon, searching for the missing dwarf. Fortunately, we had our dwarf, Buri in the party and he was leading. It could not have been more than a few seconds after we started that Buri held up his hand, signaling us to stop.
"There's water up ahead", he whispered. "And mist. It's interfering with my infravision. Wait here a second." He moved up maybe ten feet until he was a dim shadow in our torchlight before hurrying back to us.
"The floor is gone. Come and see. But be careful near the edge."
As a group we moved forward to the gaping hole. And what a sight it was. For almost forty feet, the floor was missing in the passage. We could see it at our end, in the pit, ten feet below us. Somewhere in the pit was the sound of running water, but it was past the view of our torches. For what we could see, a large sloping chamber descended downwards, a combination of gravel and cobble and larger stone.
"Why is this here?" Marcus asked the dwarf.
"That, I cannot say. It seems unnatural. Like someone built this dungeon on the kind of fill you have between the walls of a castle. And then water got in and eroded it away."
"What do we do?" asked the thief as she eyed the vague shape of the continuation of the passage in the distance. She was worried she'd be asked to climb it.
"I think.. we should try and follow the water first", Buri replied. "The walls are undercut and it would be exceedingly hazardous to climb out. The water must go somewhere. Maybe we can find some answers there." He was thinking back now to his youngest days and his elders in the clan. 'Follow the water' they always told him.
After several minutes of nailing a single piton into a stable gap between the flagstones on the floor, a rope was lowered into the pit. The thief went first, followed by the dwarf and the rest of the party. After several moments of scrambling, the group reached the stream - a narrow but fast trickle over cobble and stone. They followed the stream further, to where it bent slightly to the right. They were now in a second chamber, whose roof looked like a precarious mix of rock and rubble. Ahead was a short waterfall and then the stream ended in a perpetually gurgling pool of water.
"It just.. drains into the ground here." Marcus said. Buri frowned.
The party elf, a ranger by profession, who had remained silent until this point, spoke up from the rear. She had been quietly examining the rest of the new chamber when the pool was discovered.
"Over here." she announced quietly. The party scrambled up some of the breakdown away from the pond. Ahead, they could see that the rubble ended and became a proper cave. "Look at the ground", she gestured.
Between her feet were a set of not-entirely human tracks. They had the overall humanoid shape, but the toes on the left foot were clawed, and the right foot had six normal digits.
The party looked up at her. She had already drawn her daggers. "Mongrelmen." she said.
