by DB King
The Akhians were unable to do anything to aid the fight. The net flew through the air toward them, forcing them to retreat. Amun dived toward a pile of broken skeleton warriors and flung their blades up at the harpy, but despite his accurate aim the monster was able to bat the flying blades out of the air with her claws, or beat her wings to throw the flying blades off course.
Marcus glared around the courtyard. There had to be something he could do to counter this hideous monster. If he could only entangle it somehow…
Of course! The net!
He dove toward the monster’s first net. It lay on the ground a little bit away from him, glowing up from the flagstones. He braced himself, thinking that touching the net might burn him, or trigger some other defensive mechanism, but there was nothing. The net was cool and heavy in his hand, the cords made of glowing light.
Marcus launched himself up into the air, gaining speed as he gained height. The harpy was occupied in defending against a barrage of skeleton blades that Amun and Isa were launching at it. The monster didn’t even seem able to muster the focus required to blast another jet of fire at them.
It was just the opportunity Marcus required.
Keeping to the harpy’s blind side, he got above the monster and whirled the net in the air. The hissing sound alerted the harpy, and it growled as it glanced over its shoulder. Marcus flung the net. In his early days training at the thieves’ guild, he had been trained in how to do this, and he was glad to find that his training had not left him despite the intervening years.
As the harpy realized what was happening, a blade hit it in the wing and another in the chest. It screamed as greenish blood fountained out from the chest wound and its right wing lost strength. As it raised its hands to cover its face, the net wrapped around it and tangled arms, head, and wings.
The harpy lashed around, trying to escape, trying to flap its wings and get free, but it just tangled itself further. It plummeted to the ground, and Marcus arrowed down after it even as Amun and Isa charged toward it with their weapons raised.
Fire blasted from the harpy’s hands, but the blasts were not aimed, and they blazed harmlessly into the air. The harpy smashed into the flagstones with a wet crunch and Isa leaped forward, plunging the tip of her spear into the monster’s wrinkled throat.
“Now we can say that we’ve done it!” Marcus laughed as he landed. There was a rumbling noise, and they looked around to see that the plinth which had held the statue had retracted into the ground, revealing a flight of stairs leading down and away from the flagged courtyard.
“Come on,” Marcus said. “I’ve a feeling that we will end up back at the start if we go down that corridor.”
The Akhians were obviously bursting with questions, but Marcus stepped forward and entered the passage. Amun and Isa glanced at each other, then at Ella. They shrugged and followed Marcus without asking their questions.
The corridor that they entered was, like the entranceway and the first corridor, made from walls and floor of intermeshed tree roots. After the bright courtyard they had just fought in, the corridor seemed dark and cool. Marcus breathed the stale air with some distaste as he made his way downward.
Everyone stayed on guard as they went down the corridor, but there were no more traps. The dungeon, it seemed, had thrown everything it had at them.
Chapter 24
Sure enough, they hit the entrance space after a few minutes walking. As they stepped out, Marcus felt, rather than heard, the invisible barrier snap into place behind him. He glanced over his shoulder, and experimentally pressed a hand back through the entrance.
His push met the same impenetrable, slightly flexible resistance that he had felt the first time around. He nodded, thoughtfully, and tried the middle corridor. Again, the barrier was in place. On the left, there was no barrier.
“We went down the left-most corridor,” Isa said thoughtfully, “and we came back out through the right hand one. But what about this middle corridor leading straight ahead?”
She pressed her hand against it, feeling the barrier.
“Strange, isn’t it?” Marcus said, “but there’s nothing I can see to explain it. I guess maybe we’ll learn something about it next time we run it?”
He turned and gestured to the small, iron-bound chest that sat by the entrance. Ella and Amun had opened it and excitedly rain their hands through the bright gold coins that filled it. “The loot had spawned,” Marcus said, “and that only happens when the dungeon is complete, so I’m afraid I can’t explain this middle corridor.”
Isa nodded, gazing thoughtfully down the mysterious passage. She shrugged. “As you say, perhaps the mystery will be revealed if we have the chance to run this dungeon a second time.”
Amun lifted the chest of gold and Marcus opened the door. Together, the four adventurers stepped out into the entrance lobby.
Dungeon Master: Level 3
Dungeon Chambers: 5
Dungeon fights: 12
Progress to next chamber: 100%
Marcus smiled. He was now ready to begin the process of creating a new dungeon chamber.
“We’ll go upstairs to my study,” Marcus said. “And see what’s been happening in our absence.”
When they got to the courtyard, Marcus saw that more time had passed than he expected while they had been in the dungeon. It was late afternoon.
Kairn hailed them as they crossed the courtyard. The dwarf stepped out of the smithy, wiping his hands on his apron. As he approached, Marcus observed that the burn he had sustained to his magnificent beard seemed to have vanished. He asked Ella to take the Akhians upstairs to the study. As the others headed for the stronghold, he turned to the dwarf.
“Your beard’s grown back,” Marcus said to Kairn in greeting. “That was fast.”
“Hm. Yes. Well, I trimmed the burn out, you see. It looked unsightly.”
Marcus leaned over and looked closer. Sure enough, the burned area had been carefully trimmed out and the beard reshaped to avoid any break in its symmetry.
Marcus raised his eyebrows. “You’ve done a good job,” he said.
“You’ll find that most dwarves are excellent barbers,” Kairn said stiffly. “Not one of our most well-known talents, but there it is. You don’t live for two hundred years with a beard without learning how to take care of it.”
Marcus laughed as Kairn stroked his white beard proudly. “Anyway,” he said, “what was it you wanted to tell me about?”
“Just that I’ve created a new cage for the wight, as you asked. We moved the creature, and it seemed grateful to have more room to move.”
“Where is it now?”
“Over there, by the grain store,” Kairn pointed. “As I said before, it seems to enjoy the light, so I placed it there to get the best of the afternoon sun.”
Marcus frowned. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with it,” he said. “If we could understand what it’s saying then perhaps there might be some use to it, but without having someone who speaks the ancient tongues…” he trailed off.
“What is it?” Kairn asked, smirking slightly. “I know that look. You’ve had an idea.”
Marcus smiled at his old friend. “I might just have an idea, yes,” he said. “We’ll meet again tonight and see if we can’t find a translator after all.”
Upstairs in the study, Amun and Isa were joined by Ben and Anja. Dirk was off on his duties, overseeing the last of some work on a supply shed that was being built in the stronghold courtyard, near the workers’ accommodation.
“Tell us everything!” Anja demanded excitedly as Marcus walked in.
Marcus smiled and held up his hands. “What’s all this?” he asked innocently.
“Don’t give us that!” Ben said. “The Akhians tell us that you’ve managed to work out how to fly!”
It took an hour to satisfy his friends. He and Ella told the whole story several times, and when they were done the others insisted that Marcus demonstrate his new ability for th
em. Smiling, Marcus moved to the middle of the room, spread out his arms, and pushed gently off the ground with his willpower and nothing more.
He rose, slowly, and stopped once he was about three feet off the ground. The others applauded, and Marcus grinned at their appreciation.
As he landed, he turned to Isa and Amun. “I have a favor to ask you,” he said.
“You’ve only to name it,” Amun replied with a smile.
“Give me some things from your gear that are unique to your land. I’m going to create a new dungeon chamber based on items from the land of Akhi. I’ll need two or three things that come from your land.”
The Akhians looked at each other, then back at Marcus.
“Very well,” Amun said. “I’ll gladly do this. We lost all of our valuable trading goods when our ship was taken by the Corsair, but I have a few things that I’ve brought from my homeland.”
He reached to his belt and drew forth a pouch made of brightly colored woven fabric. Carefully, he opened this and took a few small items out, lining them up on the desk.
“This,” he said, pointing at the first item, “is something we call a scarab. They are sacred beetles that live in the sands of our home, and we carry them as good luck charms. This one has been treated in the same way as we treat our dead—embalmed with secret herbs and sand from the sacred river, to help with the passage to the afterlife.”
Marcus looked at the small object. It was about the size of his thumb, the body wrapped in strips of fine linen, but the large grabbing pincers at the front poking through the folds of the fabric.
“Here’s something else that’s unique to our land,” Amun said. He picked up from the table a lump of dark blue stone, flecked with gold and silver. “We call this starstone, and it comes from mines south of our land. We love it, but it’s rare, and we use it sparingly.”
He took up the last object. This was a little ball, linen wrapped like the scarab had been. “In this wrapping,” Amun said, “is a package of fertile soil from the sacred delta of the river. Every year, the river floods and fertilizes the land around the delta, so that we can grow our crops. The soil is sacred, and so when we leave our land, we carry a little piece away with us to remind us of home.”
“And you would give it to me?” Marcus asked, humbled by the generosity of the young Akhian.
Amun smiled. He reached inside the pouch and drew out another, identical packet. “I have two,” he said. “So yes, I’m happy to give you one. Will you show us how you create the dungeons? I’m fascinated to see how it works!”
“Of course!” Marcus said. “I’ll be happy to show you, though there’s not much to see at the beginning. I place the ingredients inside a blank chamber, then return later to see what has evolved. Give me an hour to rest, then meet me down at the dungeon lobby and I’ll show you how it works.”
Ella stayed with Marcus in the study while the others left. When they were gone, she turned to him and smiled. “So, at last the final aspect of my power has passed to you,” she said.
“And just in time, too,” he replied. “If it hadn’t been for your power of flight, I don’t know how we would have gotten out of that fix.”
“It felt as if the dungeon prompted us to do that transfer of power,” Ella said thoughtfully. “Afterward, when we were fighting the harpy, it was your power of flight that allowed us to defeat the enemy.”
“Do you think the dungeons can do that? Sense something so personal as the need to transfer your power to me?”
“I don’t know,” Ella said, “but it feels like your dungeons are more conscious and aware of what’s going on than I’ve ever known a dungeon to be. Look at how it broke the rope and caused you to fall. That’s not the kind of thing a dungeon would normally do—it’s too deadly a trap. But the rope broke, and you were knocked back, almost as if the dungeon knew that a crisis was needed to transfer the power of flight from me to you.”
Marcus nodded. “I’ve been thinking for a while now that it would be good to try to transfer that power, but I couldn’t think how we would actually do it. Turns out all we needed was a bit of pressure.”
“Quite a lot of pressure, actually,” Ella corrected him.
Marcus laughed. “You’re right. But now I have the power, I can’t wait to see what comes of it. I have a few ideas already for ways it could be used, but we’ll need to see to the most important things first.”
“Such as?”
“First? A rest! I have a feeling this is going to be a long night, and I’m overdue for an hour’s sleep.”
It was closer to two hours later when Marcus had rested, changed his clothes, and eaten. By then dusk had fallen, and the first stars were coming out in the night sky above as he and Ella made their way down to the courtyard.
The captain of the guard approached Marcus and saluted him as he came into the courtyard. “Sir,” the man said, “the wights are active out in the Wasteland. They are not coming within a bowshot of the walls, but they are out there for sure, and the cavalry company has been seen riding back and forth out there as well.”
“Are you prepared in case they attack again?”
“Yes, sir. We have fire arrows at various points along the walls, and the men have instructions to be ready to fight at a moments’ notice. I’ve doubled the watch, so if any of these wights try anything, they’ll meet with stiff resistance.”
“Very good. Anything else?”
“Just that the Akhian travelers are waiting for you around at the entrance to the dungeon lobby, sir.”
Marcus thanked the man for his report and sent him back to his duties. He walked around to the entrance, Ella at his side, and headed down the stone stairs to the dungeon lobby.
Here, by the light of torches, he found Amun and Isa sitting on the floor with Kairn. They had brought food and drink, and seemed to be feeling fairly merry.
“Hey! It’s the dungeon master!” Kairn roared. “How about knocking a few heads together, Marcus?”
“I have a feeling we’ll have plenty of chances to knock heads before too long, old friend,” Marcus said, “but just now I have a few things I need to see to. First, I want to get a dungeon into gestation using these Akhian ingredients.”
He drew his mace and moved to a blank space in the wall. Amun, Isa, and Kairn all stood up and moved out of the way to give him room, though Kairn did not relinquish the chicken leg he was working his way through.
The Akhians looked at each other and smiled, keen as they were to see the dungeon creation process in action.
Summoning his power, Marcus pointed the mace at the blank wall and said the spell.
“Crucible: Initiate!”
There was a glow of red light from the wall, and Marcus smiled as he felt the dungeon master’s power flowing from his core through the mace and into the wall. It drew energy from him, but it also filled him at the same time. He took a deep breath, enjoying the rush of satisfaction that dungeon creation always brought him.
His dungeon master level flickered past him and he was pleased to see that he had gained another level with the creation of a new dungeon.
Dungeon Master: Level 4
Dungeon Chambers: 6
Dungeon fights: 12
Progress to next chamber: 0%
On the wall before him, a simple stone door was outlined. As the light faded, it swung open silently as if on well-oiled hinges. The Akhians crowded forward to look.
“It’s so empty!” Isa said, peering in. Her voice echoed sharply off the walls of the small, blank crucible chamber.
“This is just the crucible,” Marcus explained as he took the treasures Amun had given him from his belt pouch. “I place these items within, then close the dungeon and begin the spell. The dungeon magic does the rest, taking the ingredients and creating a unique, changing environment from them. It’s an incredible magic.”
He crouched down and opened the package of sacred soil, tipping it out onto the smooth stone floor. Next, he placed the mum
mified scarab beetle on the pile, and the blue star stone gem next to it. His instinct told him something was missing.
He stood, gazing at the little pile. What was he missing?
Metal, he thought. Every other dungeon I’ve made has had some metal. This one won’t be complete until I add something metal to the ingredients.
“Wait here,” he said, a sudden idea striking him. “Don’t touch anything. I’ll be back in a moment.”
He turned and raced up the steps back to the courtyard. He jogged over to the smithy and went inside. Quickly, he found what he was looking for—a battered tin cup hanging on a hook by the water barrel. He snagged this with a finger and jogged over to the little storage shed where he’d put the liquid silver from the Pirate’s Cove dungeon.
The guard at the door to the hut saluted him and stepped aside, and Marcus entered. The two stone jars of liquid silver stood by one wall. They gleamed faintly with a radiance that was all their own.
Quickly, Marcus dipped the cup in the nearest jar, lifting a gleaming half-cup of silver out of the jar. He wiped the edge of the cup carefully on the rim of the stone jar and headed out, closing the door behind him.
The guard’s eyes went wide when he saw the gleaming silver in the cup. Marcus smiled at him before heading back to the dungeon lobby.
“Silver!” Ella said when she saw what he carried.
Smiling, Marcus stepped up to the dungeon entrance and carefully poured the liquid in a circle around the little pile of earth with the scarab and the star stone. The liquid pooled thickly on the stone floor, but did not soak into the stone the way water would have. It lay, gleaming brightly in the dim interior of the chamber.
He glanced at the tin cup. It was coated on the inside with silver, and he thought that it would probably not be a good idea for anyone to drink out of it now. He shrugged, then placed the battered cup to one side of the little pile.
“That’s everything,” he said, feeling satisfaction wash through him. He’d got it right. There was nothing more needed to create this dungeon.
