by Nick Harrow
“Sister!” the redhead screamed. She leapt away from the wahket before the surprised cat women could impale her on their spears and the illusion that had concealed her true form shredded into tatters of light the instant her feet touched the ground. The uninjured lamia moved her dagger in a hypnotic pattern off to the left of her body while the fingers of her right hand twisted themselves through the contorted gestures of a spell.
The redhead stabbed her bent fingers toward the sky, and an arcane word caused her outline to shudder and split into four exact duplicates. All four versions of the flame-haired lamia remained so close together it was impossible to tell which was the original and which were the duplicates.
The village’s inhabitants squawked like hens who’d seen a fox as they fled the battleground. I was relieved to see them come to their senses and get the fuck out of there because I didn’t have the bandwidth to worry about innocent bystanders and kill these evil bitches, too.
The wahket recovered from their confusion and advanced their formation toward the brunette who’d attacked me. The cat women on the outside of the formation marched forward slightly ahead of their companions to form an inverted arc that hemmed the lamia in. It was a good plan, but it left their flank exposed to the redhead.
Guess it was on Neph and me to drop some justice on that monster.
“Let’s show these ladies how to mind their manners, Neph,” I thought to my familiar. I descended the stairs and aimed my khopesh at the lamia. She’d been able to touch me with her dagger, so it stood to reason I could hack her apart with my blade.
“You are a fool for denying us a place at your side.” The redhead spat the words at me and coiled her tail beneath her. She spun her dagger across her fingers like a magician warming up for a performance. “You will suffer for this disrespect.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said dismissively. “You should work on your last words.”
All four versions of the lamia lunged toward me and thrust their daggers like spears aimed at my heart. The sun glinted off the weapons and filled the air with a dazzling spray of sparks.
My dungeon lord’s sight had told me the lamia could create mirror images with their magic, and I was sure all but one of the arms that came at me were harmless illusions. Unfortunately, I had no idea which limb was the one that would stab me right in the heart.
With a roar, I swept the khopesh through all the arms with a single swipe. Three of the arms twisted around the blade like plumes of smoke, but the fourth wasn’t so lucky.
The hook of my khopesh caught the lamia’s arm in the instant before her dagger would have plunged into my chest. The force of the blow pushed her arm away from me, and the sharpened inner edge of my blade opened an ugly wound that spiraled from the lamia’s wrist up to her bicep. A sheet of green blood flowed from the wound, and all the duplicates bled right along with it.
Shit, this was confusing.
“Spirits of my ancestors, rise from the Field of Reeds and shield your daughter from harm,” Nephket cried.
Wahket rose from the earth around Nephket’s feet and surrounded her in a tight, protective cordon. Their translucent bodies were the color of heavy cream, and they roared with a thousand voices. The ancestor spirits moved in fits and starts, like a movie with missing frames.
Huh. That was a freaky new trick.
The brunette lamia screamed, and one of the wahket answered with a cry of pain that stabbed through me like a lance of fire. Rathokhetra’s rage merged with my own and spun up into a whirlwind of white-hot hate.
No one touched my worshippers and lived.
The red-haired lamia and her duplicates wove around one another like a swarm of copperheads in a mating ball. I couldn’t tell where one of them ended and another began, and there was no way for me to pick the real deal from the copies.
I swiped through one of serpentine bodies, but it parted around the blade and reformed the instant the weapon had cleared the illusion. Another swing carved through two of the lamia illusions, but they darted away and reformed so quickly I still couldn’t tell which one of them was real.
The scarlet-haired monster reared up on her tail and began another spell. Her eyes burned with an unholy light, and with every syllable that left her lips her voice grew louder. I wasn’t sure what spell she was about to unleash, but it would not be good.
“Ancestors, attack!” Nephket shouted, and the ghostly wahket who’d surrounded her leapt at the lamia. Their claws shredded the illusions in a flurry of violence, and though the decoys began to reform, for one instant I saw the real deal.
I feinted a sweep to the lamia’s right with my khopesh, and the snake woman darted hard to the left to avoid an attack that never came.
Before she understood my trick, I flung my khopesh away and slammed my shoulder into her belly. I wrapped one arm tightly around my target’s waist. Her flesh was cold and rough against my chest, and her hair struck at my face like a scourge as she whipped her head from side to side in a desperate attempt to break free.
The lamia lashed at me with her tail, raked at me with her nails, and tried to stab me full of holes with her dagger. Most of the attacks bounced off the magical armor provided by my headdress, but a few of them found their way through my defenses to open minor wounds across my arms and back. Grains of black sand drizzled from the rents in my flesh, and flares of pain spread across my body like sparks of wildfire.
But my rage burned hotter and cleaner than the heat of the injuries. I secured my grip around the lamia’s waist and crushed her against my chest. Her tail flailed at my legs, but I was too strong for her attacks to knock me off-balance.
My biceps bulged and my knuckles crackled as I squeezed the air from the lamia’s lungs. The dagger fell from her hands and she clawed at my back with her nails, but her struggles grew weaker by the second.
The redhead gasped and changed tactics. Her hands left my back and scrabbled at my face in a mad search for my eyes. Black sand ran from the gouges in my forehead and slashes across my cheeks, but the lamia’s attacks were wild and lacked the strength to do real damage.
I bent my head down into her chest and squeezed even harder.
The lamia arched her spine and flung her head back in a vain attempt to escape my grasp. Her mouth opened to unleash a scream, but there was only enough air in her lungs for a feeble croak. When that was exhausted, the redhead’s hands went limp and dangled at her side.
The iron circle of my arms closed, and the lamia’s backbone gave way with a series of sharp cracks.
The monster’s illusory duplicates vanished, and she fell over my shoulder like a sack filled with wet hay. A pained groan slipped from between her lips, and her life faded away with a soft sigh.
Disgusted, I flung the body away and stood, ready to destroy the other lamia.
The wahket had beaten me to the punch.
The brunette lay in the dirt, strands of her dirty hair like an ink stain across her face. Her body was punched full of ragged holes and covered with the first purple blush of ugly bruises that would never fully form. Green blood surrounded her like a pool of poison, and I wondered if anything would ever grow in that dirt.
No ka flowed into my core, which was a bummer. I guessed that killing people in the settlement didn’t earn me any motes and made a mental note to drag my enemies into my dungeon before I offed them next time.
“You’re hurt,” Nephket said. “Let me help.”
“It’s nothing,” I said, but that was a lie. There was little pain from the cuts, but black sand still dribbled from the open wounds, and the small red circle in the upper-right corner of my vision told me I’d lost a little over ten percent of my health. “Sorry—reflex. Go ahead, pump me up.”
I expected Nephket to sing her song of healing and stamina as she’d done for us in the past, but instead she placed her hand flat against my chest and spoke a single word of divine power.
A rush of white light poured through me, and the superficial wounds th
e lamia had left on my flesh vanished. Every injury I’d suffered that day was gone as if it had never occurred, and I felt as refreshed as I had after a solid eight hours rest during my years as a mortal.
“Fancy,” I said.
“That’s me,” Nephket’s tail curled around my thigh and squeezed. “I learn new things all the time.”
“I’ll bet you do.” I pulled my familiar into a tight embrace.
She tilted her head back and gazed up at me with eyes so wide and deep I felt lost in them.
“Take me upstairs,” she said. “Now.”
“I wish I could.”
Unfortunately, a crowd had gathered to gawk at the dead lamia and the bloodied wahket. It didn’t seem very godly to scoop my familiar up for a quickie in City Hall with a pair of dead monsters and a citizen’s corpse cooling on the street.
“I suppose you’re right.” Nephket was better at picking up my thoughts every day. When we were this close, it was as if we were a single mind. “I will arrange for reparations to this man’s family.”
“Hey,” Zillah suddenly intruded in my skull. “Did you just kill monsters without me?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Snake girls.”
“Ah, man,” Zillah groaned. “I’ve always wanted to kill a snake girl. Or bang one. Are they really dead?”
“Truly.”
“Fuck.”
Chapter 11 – Goats and Sheep
WITH THE IMMEDIATE threat of rampaging monsters out of the way, I turned my attention to more mundane matters. I’d promised the shepherds and goatherders I’d secure their livestock from the predatory members of Lexios’s military, and I needed to make good on my word.
The eight wahket who’d battled the snake girls in front of City Hall had sustained minor injuries, and I patched them up with my Restoring Mantra spell once we’d returned to our private quarters. It wasn’t as powerful as Nephket’s potent healing spell, but it worked on several targets at the same time. Score one for the dungeon lord.
The Exemplar of War ability wouldn’t pull in any more critters until at least the next day, but I didn’t want to take any chances of getting caught unaware again. I asked Nephket to inform the wahket patrols to watch carefully for wandering monsters and then retreated to my dungeon for some serious work.
My first action was to review the dungeon enhancement I hoped would feed a shit-ton of goats and sheep. The Tablet of Engineering provided me with the description of the ability, and I read it carefully.
<<<>>>
TROUGH HALL
Cost: 10
Limit: No
Spawn: No
Combinable: No
Damage: N/A
Reset: N/A
Type: Cultivation
Once created, this chamber produces enough non-meat food to sustain up to five creatures with a challenge rating equal to the dungeon’s level. Creatures that require meat cannot be sustained by this chamber.
<<<>>>
My dungeon was currently stuck at level five while I worked on my settlement. According to this ability, I could feed five creatures with a challenge rating equal to that level. The question was, did this mean I could feed creatures whose total challenge rating didn’t exceed twenty-five?
No matter how many times I read the description of the Trough Hall, I couldn’t be sure my plan would work. I banished the Tablet of Engineering and summoned the Tablet of Guardians. It only took me a few seconds to find goats and sheep on the list. Both types of herd animals had a challenge rating of zero. Surely that meant I could feed an infinite number of livestock with one Trough Hall.
Surely.
I hated to spend ka without being absolutely certain of the effect it would have, but in this case I’d just have to guess. Before I added a new room to my dungeon, though, I needed to get the raiders situation squared away.
“Zillah,” I intruded on the scorpion queen’s thoughts, “take the half-orc back to the raiders and let her explain the plan to her people. If Charlie gets stupid, have Delsinia tuck the three of you away in her secret hidey-hole and beat some sense into her. Let me know when you’ve reached the raiders’ camp, and I’ll open a new tunnel to you.”
“If you say so, boss,” the scorpion queen replied. “I never imagined we’d have to work with the raiders, honestly. These are crazy days.”
“Crazy is an understatement,” I said. “And tell the dwarves to stop throwing iron ore into the magma. We’re going to need it.”
The rest of the afternoon and early evening passed in a flurry of activity. I was relieved to discover that capturing my second core had freed up a lot of passageway space for me. A quick estimate from the tablet told me I could create ten miles of ten-foot-by-ten-foot passageway without hitting the cap. That gave me plenty to work with, and enhancements to the battle plan started to pop into my head.
“First things first,” I told myself. “Let’s fix the sheep problem.”
It didn’t take long for me to create a tunnel that ran from the south side of the Kahtsinka Oasis to the section of my territory that had once belonged to the scarabkin. I had no idea how many goats or sheep I needed to shelter, so I carved out a square room a hundred feet on a side with a ten-foot-tall roof. This was the least practical thing I’d ever done in my dungeon, but it might turn out to be one of the most important.
I pulled up the Tablet of Engineering, selected the Trough Hall, and dropped it where the scarabkin had prayed to the Buried Kings. It sucked to spend ten ka to feed a bunch of filthy animals, but those filthy animals provided food and milk for my villagers. If Lexios besieged the oasis, my soldiers would need the food these animals would provide.
And so, the terrifying Lord Rathokhetra had to feed fucking goats.
Go, team!
I teleported down to the new Trough Hall to make sure there weren’t any surprises in store for the goats. No Buried Kings had risen from their tombs to attack me, so that was good. When I was satisfied that the animals would be safe, I put the second part of the plan in motion.
“Neph,” I called to my familiar. “Send some wahket to round up the herdsmen. Tell them to bring their goats and sheep to me.”
I sent a quick image to my priestess, so she knew exactly where to find me and how to get there. A trickle of humor leaked through her thoughts.
“You’re going to have goat and sheep guardians?” Her laugher rang in my head like crystalline wind chimes.
“Yep,” I said. “Meanest headbutts you’ve ever seen. Mark my words, this is going to be the hottest new trend amongst fancy dungeon lords.”
“If you insist.” A vision of a goat clad in plate armor flashed through my head, followed by another peal of Nephket’s laughter.
“You’re hilarious,” I told her. “But those battle goats will win this war. You’ll see.”
While I waited for the livestock to show up, I checked the ka level in my core. It had been a couple of days since I’d checked last, and I was pleased to find one hundred and one motes of ka waiting for me. The ka refinery I’d taken from Delsinia continued to pump out five ka every day, which gave me enough to experiment with.
It was time to play with my new toy.
I opened my fist and fed a mote of ka into the Compass of Power. The fine engraving on the surface of the arrowhead shimmered in a rainbow of brilliant colors and floated off my palm. It spun in a slow circle at eye level, then wobbled back and forth, up and down, until it finally came to rest with its tip aimed squarely over my right shoulder.
Right at my core.
“Yes, I know that’s a source of power,” I groused at the compass. “Show me something new.”
The magical arrowhead tilted side to side, like a dog unsure of how to please its master.
I fed another mote of ka into the compass and willed it to extend its range another mile. The rainbow glow took on a painful intensity, and the arrowhead spun like a dervish. Sparks flew from its surface like a Catherine wheel, and the compass throbbed with a deep
, bass pulse.
“You’re a thirsty little bastard.” I fed it another mote and pushed its range out to a radius of three miles. “C’mon, give me something.”
The arrowhead’s rotation slowed, reversed itself, and came to rest with its tip aimed south by southwest and pointed down at a thirty-degree angle. It glowed like a rainbow sun and floated a few feet ahead of me.
The compass couldn’t tell me what it had detected, but I had a sneaking suspicion it had found the godmarrow.
The urge to chase after the compass was strong, but that was a job that had to wait. I added it to my to-do list, which felt like it just kept getting longer. Wait on the goats, fight monsters, prepare for war....
My brain felt like I’d sent it running in a dozen different directions that day. Jumping in and out of bodies, dealing with the problems of my settlers, and negotiating with cannibals and raiders had worn me ragged. I let out a deep sigh, took a breath, and held it.
It was times like this that my meditation helped focus and re-energize me. Dungeon lords didn’t need to sleep, but the constant go, go, go had exhausted me. If I didn’t re-center myself and take a little time to focus my thoughts and recharge my brain cells, there was no telling the kind of trouble I’d get into. Over the course of the next few minutes, I concentrated all my thoughts on the mental effort of breathing. Sure, I had no body, but the simple rhythm of in and out transcended the physical.
I mean, that was kind of the whole point of meditation, right?
My thoughts vanished in a sea of deep, calming nothingness. My breathing carried me away from my worries and filled me with a pure energy that banished the weariness from my soul and buoyed me with every inhalation.
Until a foul stink wrecked my concentration. I opened my eyes to find a herd of filthy goats and sheep milling around the Trough Hall.
