by Nick Harrow
“Fuck it,” I grumbled. “I could worry about this all day and still not know exactly what’s going on. Let’s just spend the points and get on with it.”
Two more taps picked up an upgrade for Religion and one for Mercantile. The first was to keep Neph happy and hopefully upgrade our healing capabilities, and the second was to keep the money coming into town.
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Modifier adjustments: Cha +1, Con-1, Wis +1
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“Feel any different?” I asked Nephket.
“I don’t think so.” The priestess pulled my hands onto her sides and laced her fingers through mine. “Do I feel different to you?”
“You feel fine.” I moved my hand in slow strokes up and down the left side of the cat woman’s torso.
“Just fine?” she teased and squeezed my hands.
“You could use a little more meat on your bones.” We’d been so busy fighting off our enemies that all of my guardians had shed a few pounds despite access to the best food I could summon.
“Hmmph,” Nephket sniffed. “I don’t remember you complaining about that last night.”
“And you won’t ever hear any from me. I know how lucky I am.”
“Remember that.” Nephket slid out of my lap and threw her arms around my neck. “I need to check on my temple.”
“Your temple?” No one had told me about a temple.
“The one you built for me when you claimed the settlement.” Nephket blew me a kiss as she left the table and headed for the stairs. “I’ll bring Izel with me. She needs to keep busy.”
“Sure.” I knew I hadn’t built a temple when I’d taken the oasis, but I had just purchased a Religion upgrade. Had that been implanted retroactively in Nephket’s memories like the weirdness with the city’s defensive wall?
Reality had become way too fluid in the past couple of days.
“Reality is what a dungeon lord makes it.” Rathokhetra’s words slithered through my thoughts like a lizard darting between shadows.
I always hated it when the corpse in my brain was right, but I couldn’t argue with that statement. Maybe there was some way to turn this reality-bending shit to my advantage beyond just upgrades to the settlement. That rabbit hole was very deep and extremely twisty, though, and it consumed an hour of my day before I gave up on it. The paradox was strong in this area of the dungeon lord business, and I’d need more time to digest the possibilities.
With all of my guardians off on missions of their own, I found myself with free time and no one to help me fill it. What I really wanted to do was take a tour of the city and see what the latest upgrades had done, but that was out of the question. The whiner brigade would hear that I was out of City Hall, and they’d follow me around like lost puppies until I listened to their complaints. I couldn’t even buy more upgrades because the build points I’d just purchased hadn’t quite been digested by the tablets.
I was not in the mood for that shit.
I considered updates to the dungeon but held on to my ka because I didn’t know how many motes I’d need to deal with the tax collector when push came to shove. He had a thousand dudes out there, and I had a lot less than that. My dungeon lord powers were the only way we’d survive if he put our backs against the wall, and I wasn’t sure even those would be enough.
By the time night fell, I was restless and my brain ached from all the timetravel thoughts I’d wrestled with. Unfortunately, when Kezakazek and Nephket showed up for dinner, they weren’t in the mood for much conversation.
The drow’s thoughts were consumed with the task I’d given her, and while she insisted she was onto something, she didn’t want to share her progress with me until she had something solid to turn over.
Nephket was excited by her new church, and she enthusiastically detailed her plans to expand it with a whole hierarchy of priestesses and other staff. She was totally down with the idea of a religious empire in my name, but I had a hard time seeing that far into the future. After some aborted attempts at lighter conversation, my guardians ate in silence, and we all went to bed too tired and wrung out to do anything other than sleep.
Kez left before sunup to return to her studies and swore she’d eat the breakfast I pressed on her as she walked back to the fortress. I still worried about the sorceress, but she was so filled with energy and hunger to complete her mission for me that I thought it best not to get in her way.
Nephket held service at her church after breakfast, but I didn’t attend. I still had a hard time accepting that the wahket literally worshipped me, and the idea of a bunch of villagers doing the same didn’t sit easy in my head. How weird would it be for them if their god showed up at his own worship services?
That pattern repeated itself the next day, and the next. The Tablet of Conquest still hadn’t finished up with the investment of build points that I’d made, and I was bored out of my skull.
Which is why I was very glad when Zillah reached out to me on the morning of the second day after she’d left.
The scorpion queen’s thoughts burst into mine without preamble. “We found the blood gnomes, but we’ve got a problem.”
I’d been on the verge of burning up my brain with more reality-bending thoughts, and the distraction was quite welcome.
“Do I need to send the wahket down to help you and Del clear out the cannibals?” I didn’t like the idea of sending the city’s defenders on a strike mission with the tax collector parked on my doorstep, but I liked the idea of a swarm of tiny cannibals eating my citizens even less.
“I need you.” Zillah’s voice was as taut as a guitar string and vibrated with an intense emotion I had never associated with the scorpion queen: uncertainty.
I wanted to go to Zillah, to protect her against whatever enemy she now faced, but there was no time. If I hiked down to her location with my core in tow, I wouldn’t reach her before whatever trouble she’d landed in the middle of had done its damage.
But that didn’t mean I had to leave her all alone.
“Brace yourself,” I said. “I’m coming in.”
The Guardians tablet appeared before me, and I found what I needed in the blink of an eye. Without hesitation, I tapped the Soul Mount ability, and fifteen motes of ka bled out of my core in a cold and nauseating rush.
The new ability lit up my brain like a Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. My senses fractured into crystalline segments that flooded my mind with prismatic sprays of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell that both did and did not belong to me.
I found myself on padded feet, which carried me in a circle around a cluster of wahket and villagers who sang a hymn in low, solemn voices.
Arcane symbols twisted themselves into knots across a sheet of vellum so filled with writing it was more black than not.
The chains that covered my mostly naked body clattered together as I watched over my ally and our diminutive prisoner.
Six of my eight legs shifted nervously, my tail flexed, and my fists clenched as I stared down at a pathetic creature with grub-white skin and deep, black pits lined with jaundiced, fleshy nodules where its eyes should have been.
My thoughts focused on Zillah and my consciousness dove into her mind and body like a falling star.
“What the hell?” The scorpion queen’s spine stiffened, and her jaw clenched at the sudden invasion of her personal space.
“Sorry about that,” I said. “New ability. Still haven’t quite gotten the hang of it.”
My senses were still scrambled, but instead of five sets of input, I now only had to deal with one.
It just wasn’t the one that belonged to my body.
Now that I was in Zillah’s flesh, her sensations flooded my thoughts. Her muscles were tight as coiled springs, ready to lash out at the merest thought. The thin bands of chitinous armor that protected her body were as strong and unyielding as steel plates. A knot of warm, vibrant energy stirred within her core, and the world seemed both more vibrant and more dangerous than I’d
ever imagined it. Her prey’s scent filled her nostrils with a delicious mixture of fear and rage that stoked the flames of her predatory instincts.
“Do you always feel like this?”
“I guess so,” Zillah thought back at me. “Is it bad?”
“No.” I considered my next words because I wasn’t sure how to express what it was like to experience her from this new vantage. “You’re just so...alive.”
“Well, duh.” She pointed her spear at the pale, skinny freak that lay on the ground at her feet. “Wanna question this blood gnome with me?”
“Allow me to take the reins.” That was easier said than done, but after a few seconds of fumbling around inside Zillah’s body, I figured out how to make it work.
“You speak Common?” I said in Zillah’s voice.
Del’s eyes narrowed as she examined the scorpion queen. She recognized me after a moment, and gave me a quick wink.
The gnome nodded and the strange pits where he should have had eyes narrowed into curious half moons.
“We been talkin’ in Suntongue already, ya know,” it said. The creature was naked, but it lacked any characteristics to identify its sex. Its groin was as smooth and flat as a Barbie doll, but it didn’t even have the plastic mounds of nipple-free breasts to mark it as potentially female.
“Why did you kill my people?” I asked. “And don’t ask questions unless you want to get stuck.”
“Like I says,” it said, and raised its hands to make sure I understood it was not about to ask a question, “we’s hungry. Them rock boys got’emselves chained by that girl, and we can’t get near nuff to fill our bellies like we wanna. Jinticks said fresh meat come up, so up I come.”
The creature’s voice was high-pitched and squeaky, like a bat’s echolocation screeches bent into words.
“Who’s Jinticks?”
“They’s all over.” The blood gnome showed a grin filled with pointed teeth. “They’s say stuffs, but ya never see ’em. Prolly tasty, but too trickly to catch.”
“No idea what he’s talking about,” Zillah’s thoughts whispered to mine. “But there’s a lot of weird shit in the Great Below.”
The unbidden image of a mindspider filled my thoughts, and I pushed it away before it could take root in my nightmares. Weird shit, indeed.
“What happened to the rock boys?” I asked. The idea of this disgusting little maggot thing eating anyone turned my stomach, but if I could restore the blood gnomes’ food source, my people would be safe.
“She chained ’em up good, gots ’em diggin’ and diggin’,” he said. “Like a bonechomper rootin’ in a gruntlephant.”
I didn’t like the sound of that at all. If someone had moved into the area and disrupted the ecology of the Great Below, my dungeon and settlement could have serious trouble on their hands.
One fucking thing after another.
“Can you feel this?” Zillah’s thoughts tickled my mind as she flattened one palm across the tight muscles of her abdomen.
“Yes.”
Zillah rubbed her hand in a slow circle across her belly. The sensation of her smooth skin under the tips of her sensitive fingertips was enough to tangle my thoughts into knots.
“Ooooh, and I can feel you feeling it.” Her thoughts bounced around mine like kittens ready to play. “This ability has potential for some real fun.”
“Not now,” I pleaded. “Let’s deal with the gnome first.”
“Spoilsport.” Zillah’s hand returned to her spear, but the memory of her flesh remained lodged firmly in my thoughts.
“You feelin’ alright?” The blood gnome’s eye pits squinted up at Zillah. “Gotta weird look on your face, like you just ate a fistful of dreamshrooms.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
Despite the creature’s grisly appearance and annoying voice, it was hard to be mad at it. There was something abhorrently cute about the doughy little thing that made me want to give it a pat on its bald head. “But who is this ‘she’ who took the rock boys?”
“I can shows ya.” The blood gnome scrambled to its feet with its hands raised above its head. “It’s not too far.”
“This is a trap,” Delsinia whispered into my thoughts. “I can feel it in my bones.”
“If it’s a trap, we’ll kill him and all his little pals,” Zillah responded.
That was new. My guardians couldn’t normally hear one another’s thoughts. I guess when I was inside Zillah she could hear whatever I did.
Sexy times were about to get a lot more complicated, and a lot more exciting.
Delsinia was probably right about the trap. On the other hand, the blood gnome was so small and spindly I doubted even twenty of its friends would pose much of a challenge to either of my guardians, much less both together.
Rathokhetra’s agreement rumbled through my skull like the sleepy breath of a dragon. I didn’t like the old monster, but he’d been smart enough to conquer most of Soketra before his allies betrayed him. His morals were shaky, but his tactics were sound. If he thought we were fine following the blood gnome, then we likely were.
“Lead the way,” I demanded. When the gnome didn’t immediately move, I prodded it with the crotch of Zillah’s twin-tined spear.
“C’mon, then.” It rubbed its belly and turned down the deep passage ahead of us.
I’d never been this deep into the Great Below and didn’t ever want to go down there again. The tunnel we traveled through was wide but twisty, and dozens of other passages punctured its walls, floor, and ceiling. Eyes that glowed radium green watched us from the mouths of those passages, and the echoes of bestial howls and screeches rose from the throats of others. There was a whole ugly world down there, and I didn’t want any part of it.
Delsinia sidled up alongside Zillah and wrapped her arm around the scorpion queen’s shoulders. But when the former dungeon lord whispered into my guardian’s ear, the words were meant for me.
“This is why we failed before, my love. The depths are filled with powers, dark and strange, and we must make them ours before we turn our eyes to the surface.”
Surprisingly, Rathokhetra remained silent on the subject. I’d have to twist his arm at some point to find out if Delsinia was right. She was a very intelligent woman, but she’d also spent a few centuries locked up in an abandoned dungeon with no one but the walking dead to keep her company, and then she’d been tortured by Kozerek for a few years. Her mind, sharp as it was, might also be very, very bent.
“Let’s worry about the tax collector first,” I thought back. “Once he’s out of our hair we will see about digging ourselves a deeper hole.”
“But there are so many exciting options down here,” Zillah said. It was strange to feel her lips move as she spoke and hear her voice from inside her head. “My old boss used to tell me there were things down here that we could eat that would give us magical powers.”
The blood gnome cast a nervous glance over its shoulder at Zillah’s words and rubbed its hands together anxiously. Its pace quickened, and it led us down a series of side passages that twisted and turned like a sidewinder with a broken back.
“I cannot remember the path back,” Delsinia said.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ve got this.”
Even outside of my dungeon I had an uncanny knack for navigation. As we wormed our way ever deeper into the Great Below, a three-dimensional map took shape in my memory. I might not be able to lead us all the way back to the oasis, but I could definitely get us back to the point where I’d joined with Zillah.
“Isn’t he dreamy?” Zillah licked her lips. The sensation from inside her thoughts was entrancing, and she knew it. “I should try—”
“Here,” the blood gnome whispered and dropped into a crouch, palms pressed flat against the floor. “Come and see.”
The tunnel we were in had opened into a wide cavern. The gnome extended its lanky arm over the end of the tunnel and pointed at something below us. Zillah and Delsinia both hunkere
d low and eased forward to take positions on either side of our cannibal tour guide.
A roughly circular cavern fifty feet across stretched out below us. The domed ceiling was thirty feet off the floor, which was ten feet below our current position. Unlike the rest of the Great Below, there was plenty of light in this chamber.
A pool of orange magma bubbled in the center of the cavern’s floor. Its hellish light cast long shadows behind the stooped and stunted figures that labored around it. The short but burly humanoids carted full buckets of stone from a hole in the northern side of the cavern to the natural cauldron. They upended their cargo into the molten earth and then trudged back to refill their buckets.
But the bucket carriers weren’t the only creatures in the cavern.
Men, women, elves, drow, and even a towering green-skinned troll watched over the work gang. They were well armed and armored, and several of them carried whips they lashed across the backs of laborers who slowed or faltered in their task. I had to wonder how these people had gotten down here, and what they were up to. The Great Below was a place for monsters and, other than the troll, these folks didn’t fit that definition. They must have been seriously hard to survive in this subterranean hell.
“The rock boys,” the blood gnome said and pointed at the bucket carriers, “dig all the time. All that work makes ’em thick and meaty. Good eatin’ once ya get the bones out.But then she came. Made rock boys move. Mean lady chased us away. Had to go up to find meat.”
“Where is she?” I didn’t see anyone down there who looked like they were in charge. The folks with whips had the bored, idle look of people who were just following orders, not giving them. “Point out who we need to kill so your people can get back to chewing on the rock boys.”
The gnome pointed past the slave drivers to a tent on the cavern’s shadowed western side. Its large canopy was big enough to house all the overseers with room to spare. Vivid red and white stripes emanated from the pinnacle of the tent in a pattern that reminded me of a circus big top. The shelter’s canvas side panels were anchored to the floor by heavy pitons, and the only entrance I saw was a single open flap on the side that faced us.
