A Quest for Chumps (Departed Dimensions Book 1)

by G. M. Reinstra

  The inside of the crypt was not as eerie as she had imagined it. She had pictured heaps of corpses and bones reposing throughout the mausoleum, and she’d imagined that there would be an overwhelming smell of rot. But the smell in here was something more like the combination of dampness, mold, and mildew. Not exactly pleasant, but not overwhelming either. Furthermore, it appeared as though all of the ancient remains were contained in caskets, or urns; the burials had clearly been respectful. She found epitaphs carved all along the walls in some language she did not understand. Ultimately this place did not feel eerie or disturbing, but remarkably calm and peaceful. As they walked deeper into the entryway, the path seemed to open up enough that John and Nivin were able to walk side-by-side in the front. Rialta took up position in the middle of the group with Remmy and Lorenza behind her. The path ahead went forward and ended at a wall, but there was an opening into a corridor on the right.

  “John! Look!” Remmy hissed. Rialta turned to find Remmy pointing ahead into the darkness. Rialta looked to where he was pointing and struggled to keep from letting out a scream of surprise. Just beyond the opening ahead, a pair of gleaming, red eyes seemed to be streaking toward them. Nivin managed to loose an arrow just as the giant rodent leapt toward them. Lorenza let out something between a yelp and a moan when it crashed to the brick floor, writhing and squeaking furiously. John stepped forward and finished it off with a quick jab of his spear. Rialta held up her flame to get a better look at the attacking rat, but she immediately regretted this. As the light of her fire fell across the floor, she saw the massive, twitching heap of a rat that could not have been any less than two feet in length.

  “Oh god!” Rialta cried, turning her head away.

  “Hush, Rialta!” Lorenza whispered. “Listen! There could be more up ahead!”

  They all stood still, willing their ears to pick up on the slightest sound of squeaks, skittering steps, or gnashing teeth. They squinted into the crevices of darkness for the slightest glimpse of movement. All was still and silent.

  “So was that it?” John said. “When they said the crypt was infested, I expected to have to deal with more than one.”

  “Hush!” Lorenza whispered, her eyes wide with terror. “I hear something!”

  Rialta had heard it too. A faint series of absurdly deep squeaks and the unquestionable pitter-patter of rats moving about in the distance. But something was wrong. The sounds were too distant, too muffled to be anywhere near them.

  “It almost sounds like they’re in the walls,” Rialta whispered.

  Nivin took a few tentative steps forward, taking great care to move without making a sound. Rialta watched as his form sank into the shadows in front of them. She braced herself for action, but nothing happened. After a moment, Nivin snapped his fingers to summon them to his side. As they approached him, he pointed to the floor with a grim frown on his face. Rialta and the others looked down to see that a slab of stone had been seamlessly fitted into the ground in the shape of a large square. A sudden feeling of dread washed over Rialta as she realized what she was looking at.

  “A trap door,” she muttered.

  “What?” Lorenza said, her voice laced with panic.

  “There must be a chamber below us,” John said. “Nivin, help me move this.” Nivin moved to the opposite side of the slab and crouched down to pick it up. “Ready when you are,” John said. They each leaned over to remove the stone slab from the floor.

  A horrible miasma of stale, rotten air flooded over Rialta as Nivin and John moved the massive stone slab. The sounds of the rats instantly became louder, but the light from Rialta’s fire could not penetrate the darkness below them.

  “How are we supposed to get down there without being swarmed the second we hit the floor?” Remmy whispered.

  “I can create a ward to protect us as we go in, but it won’t last long,” Rialta said. “If the sound is anything to go by, there are a lot of them down there. We are only just going to have enough time to get our bearings before all hell breaks loose.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” John said, stowing his spear and removing his daggers from his belt.

  “Are—are you sure about this?” Lorenza asked. Even by the faint light of Rialta’s flame, the anxiety in her expression was evident.

  “Are you serious? They’re just rats, Lorenza,” John said dismissively. “We’ll get a good look at them and kill ‘em before they know what happened.”

  “You’re really that confident that nothing will go wrong?” Lorenza asked.

  “Absolutely,” John said. “Right, guys?” John added, looking at Remmy and Rialta.

  “I’ll have a blessing ready,” Remmy said.

  “Uh—yes, I think we—we should be fine,” Rialta added.

  Lorenza and Nivin looked at one another. Nivin nodded and grasped the pommels of the two short swords beneath his dark cloak.

  “Right then,” John said. “Remmy, Lorenza, do your thing before we go in. Rialta, why don’t you take a look down there so you know where to land after you cast your ward? We’ll be ready to follow you in as soon as you say so.”

  Rialta nodded and leaned over the edge of the trap door. She carefully lowered her ball of flame for a better look inside. She saw a dirt floor about fifteen feet below her, and she shivered as she observed the shadows of several more giant rats cross through the light she had created. She moved the ball of fire up higher to observe the entrance and found a rickety wooden ladder stretching down into the lower chamber.

  “There’s a ladder in here, but I think it would still be best if we dropped in instead of using it. My ward will only last us a few seconds and I need to cast it before we go in. If we use the ladder, the ward will have worn off by the time we all get down there. Does everyone agree?”

  “Let’s just do this before I change my mind,” Lorenza said. “I’ll play us a song. Remmy, do whatever you gotta do.” She reached into her cloak, took up her horn, and began to play a slow, melancholy song completely unlike the fanfare she had played the day before during the battle with the bandits. Rialta noticed that although the song was different, the same unearthly choir of voices and instruments seemed to accompany her. As she listened, she felt calmer and reassured, as if someone much more powerful than anyone among them had promised her that she would escape from this incident unscathed.

  “Dearest gods above, hear our prayer,” Remmy whispered, retrieving his tome and opening it to an apparently random page. “We’re about to get into a really messed-up situation, and it would be really great if you could help us out. You see, my friend Rialta is about to blindly dive into a confined box of human remains and vermin, and personally, I can’t think of anything more disgusting. Like seriously, if Satan himself showed up right this minute and threw up through this trap door, I’m not sure it would do all that much to worsen the sheer gut-wrenching, revolting den of horrors that Rialta is about to—”

  “Let’s wrap this up, Remmy,” Rialta said.

  Remmy nodded. “So anyway, we ask that you all lend us a moment of your time to protect us while we embark on an endeavor to return these perturbed souls to their rest.” And with that, he snapped his tome shut and put it back in his pack.

  “Here goes nothing, then,” Rialta said. She dropped her conjured flame, and the crypt enveloped them all in darkness. She withdrew her wand and held it out in front of her with both hands. Concentrating hard, Rialta willed her mana to form a pillar around her, and in an instant, the flaming ward burst into being: a perimeter of bright, blue flames had surrounded them. She knew there was not much time now—the spell would expire soon, so she forced herself to drop down through the trap door before she could give her actions any more thought.

  As Rialta landed on the floor, she felt a sudden stabbing pain in her right foot. She looked at the ground and saw that a long, broken stick had penetrated the sole of her boot. It was a very curious thing, for the ground seemed to be dotted here and there with other misshapen dry, gray s
ticks.

  And then she saw a skull—a human skull lying among the gray sticks—and she knew at once that they were not sticks, but bones. She looked up as a chorus of hissing erupted in every direction around her. Just beyond the bounds of her flaming ward was a sea of red eyes. Nearly three dozen gigantic rats were prowling around her in the darkness, all of them ready to pounce the moment her spell died out.

  Rialta opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. She was in such shock that she did not even flinch when John came crashing down beside her.

  “Rialta, are you okay?” he asked as he looked up into her face. Then he turned toward the edge of the ward. “Shit,” he muttered. “Nivin! Get down here!”

  Nivin did not hesitate. He was the next to jump down through the opening above, and he observed the mass of discarded bones in wide-eyed horror before looking out toward the threat of the rats. He drew his swords from their scabbards and took a defensive stance. Remmy and Lorenza were the next to come through, each of them catching sight of the rats surrounding them in all directions.

  And then Rialta’s ward went out.

  A din of screeches and shouts ensued. Rialta instinctively crouched down to the ground to make herself a smaller target, but she instantly regretted it when her hands touched the bones on the floor of the crypt. She recoiled and stood back up as a screeching hiss seemed to fly past her head in the darkness.

  “Rialta! Your fire!” John shouted from somewhere in the darkness.

  “Right!” Rialta said, and she held her hands out in front of her, concentrating her thoughts on conjuring a stream of fire. In an instant, a plume of flames erupted from her open palms, and a half-dozen rats screamed out in pain as her spell ignited them.

  “Gahh!”

  Rialta just managed to stop her spell when the tail end of her flames caught Nivin’s outstretched arm. He dropped one of his swords and he cradled his injured arm to his chest. Darkness consumed them all once more.

  “Oh Nivin, I’m so sorry!” Rialta shouted. “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Just give us some light again!” John shouted.

  “Right!” Rialta shouted back. She raised her hands once more and conjured her steady illuminating flames. Remmy and Lorenza were huddled beside her—Lorenza playing her horn, and Remmy attempting to read from his tome. To her left, Nivin was dodging and weaving his way through swarms of rats, his swords glinting in the light of her flames as he slashed his way through them. Astonished, she watched him relentlessly kill ten rats in a row without getting so much as scratched. To her right, John was fighting his way through the swarms of rats with much less success. As big and strong as he was, John was unable to move like Nivin. The rats began to swarm him, their weight causing him to fall to his knees.

  “Nivin!” Rialta shouted. Nivin turned around at once, and Rialta pointed to the heap of rats swarming around John. Nivin finished off one final rat on his side of the crypt before bolting toward John. He slashed through the small pile of rats surrounding John, dispatching three or four at a time with each strike. But even though he managed to scatter the attacking rats, a single rat remained.

  And Nivin stopped at once, holding both of his swords in a defensive stance. He could not attack the final rat, because it had wrapped itself around John’s neck.

  Rialta froze in horror as she watched John writhe around on the ground, the only remaining rat fiercely biting at his face and clawing around his neck. Just then, Remmy rushed past her and landed a kick square in the rat’s ribs, and it hurtled off into the distance with a dull thud. It soon came charging back, but Nivin was too quick. He stowed his swords, drew his bow, and loosed a single shot at the rat, killing it instantly.

  The death of the final rat shook Rialta from her state of shock. She looked back down to the dirt floor to find John’s limp form in front of her. “John!” she screamed, her voice cracking. Her flames extinguished once more as she ran forward and fell to his side. She groped around in the dark, and sifted through dirt and bones, her hands trembling. Finally, she felt her hand collide with one of John’s massive arms. She patted along his arm up to his face, and she felt a great sinking in her stomach; she felt his blood on her hands.

  “John—no… no… no. Please…”

  “Would you knock it off?” John said with a grunt as he knocked Rialta’s hands aside. “I’m fine, just got a few cuts is all.”

  Rialta sat upright and reignited her ball of fire. Nivin, Remmy, and Lorenza were all huddled around her and John. She apparently had not heard them move in closer in the midst of her panic. The shirt John wore under his armor was torn around the collar, and he was bleeding from a long, deep scratch which ran from just above his collarbone to the top of his left shoulder. Lorenza immediately took out her horn and began to play another slow, sorrowful song. A pale light seeped from the bell of her horn and engulfed John’s supine form. His wound instantly began to heal, and Rialta felt the pain in her foot begin to subside as well.

  “You gave me a scare there, buddy,” Remmy said to John with a nervous laugh.

  “Well I owe you and Nivin for the save. That was a hell of a nice punt. You must have sent that thing flying twenty feet,” John said. “Come on, let’s get out of here before we do anything else.”

  Rialta simply nodded in response, and she stood and walked toward the ladder alongside the others.

  Chapter 20

  The Disgraced Child

  As they emerged from the crypt, Rialta staggered forward into the waning daylight. The fresh air and light of day seemed to act as a trigger, breaking her from her stunned trance. The horror of the crypt suddenly washed over her. She stumbled forward across the path that led up to the manor house and collapsed under the shade of a large oak tree. She took two shallow, heaving breaths before lurching forward and vomiting on the ground.

  “Holy shit, Rialta, you okay?” Remmy asked, trotting up beside her. He fell to his knees and put his hand on her back.

  “No,” Rialta said, choking back a sob. “I just nearly got you all killed…”

  “Ah, come on, Rialta” John said uneasily as he joined Remmy by her side. “Everyone’s fine. We killed all those rats and now we’re gonna get paid, right? Everything went exactly as we expected it to go.”

  “How can you all be so cavalier about what just happened? Especially you, John?” Rialta said through her sobs. “I saw that thing gnawing at your neck and I thought maybe—maybe you had…”

  John shrugged. “Listen, Rialta, when it comes to combat, you either die or you don’t. I didn’t die, thanks to you and everyone else here. And I’m grateful for that. I lived to fight another day, so I just don’t see the point in dwelling on it.”

  “Do you know why I tried to convince you to go in there, John?” Rialta asked. “Do you know why I was so insistent on putting all four of your lives at risk for the sake of a few extra coins?” And now she got to her feet, gently pushing away Remmy’s hand.

  John simply shook his head.

  Rialta looked him in the eye and heaved a great, shuddering sigh. “I did it to protect myself. I did it because I didn’t want you all to know that I’ve lived a life full of secrets, lies, and disgrace,” she said in a rushed whisper. Tears continued to flow down her face as she spoke, but it felt strangely freeing to say the things she had kept locked inside her since she was a little girl.

  “What the hell are you talking about, Rialta?” John said.

  “I’m not originally from Ro, John. I’m from Raorik. And my full name…” She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “… is Rialta Meria.”

  Lorenza let out a sharp gasp, and Nivin fell to his knees, bowing before Rialta.

  “Okay…” Remmy said, looking at Nivin and Lorenza with a bewildered expression. “So what?”

  “You fool!” Lorenza shouted, her eyes open wide. She had fallen to her knees beside Nivin. “She’s a princess!” she shouted, pointing at Rialta.

  “I have not been a princess since I was
a small child,” Rialta said softly. “And both of you, please get up.”

  Nivin stood up at once, but his eyes remained fixed on the ground. Lorenza stood slowly, her eyes still wide with shock.

  Rialta drew another deep breath and faced John and Remmy. “My mother was once one of the queens of Raorik. She was an unwilling pawn in the king’s coalition, and it ate away at her. She dared to defy him in public, and naturally, it enraged him. But before he could order her to be executed, she fled to the rebel dimension of Ro, and she took me with her. She knew Ro’s history very well, of course, because it was the only colony that had ever bested the king, and she knew that our best chance of a life all our own would be on Ro.”

  She paused in her story, but nobody else spoke. She continued:

  “But the king was not satisfied with our mere absence. His cruel ego could not allow us to abscond from the kingdom without punishment. He chased her down and had her killed. And me, well…” Rialta trailed off as silent tears continued to drip down her face. “Why bother killing off one of the seemingly endless illegitimate heirs to his throne? He let me be, and so there I was, destined to be an orphan in a foreign land, growing up without anyone knowing who I truly was.

  “So you see,” Rialta continued, turning to Lorenza and wiping her eyes on her sleeve, “I am no princess. I am nothing but a discarded bastard.”

  Remmy and John stared at her in disbelief. Rialta wanted one of them to say something—anything to forestall her ultimate confession, but nothing came.

  “That is why I have this stupid accent, Lorenza,” Rialta said. “And that is why I was so insistent on taking up this reckless quest. Because I just wanted us out of that manor house before any of you could make the connection between me and the portrait of one of my siblings.”