by Nick Harrow
“They’re here!” Nephket shouted and showed me a flash of a scarabkin as it shoved its oozing maw and clacking mandibles through the hole it had just created in my tunnel.
“Kill it,” I shouted. “I need their ka, and I need it now!”
I had no idea if I could stop the horror show started by the oracle if I claimed the stele, but it had to be worth a try. But to do that, I needed five more ka.
I also reached out to Zillah, who was actually paying attention to me this time.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“I’m about to open the tunnel ahead of you,” I told her. “Hit those stupid bugfuckers in the back as hard as you can. They’ll be sandwiched between you and Nephket, and I need you to make the most of the ambush. I need ka, and I need it before something big and bad shows up and eats us all.”
“Done,” she said, and I felt the rush of excitement that raced over her as she hurried through the opening I’d just created in the tunnel.
The wahket fired on the oracle again, and the last flight of bolts was the one that did the trick. She collapsed under the weight of those quarrels, and her opalescent eyes grew dark and glassy.
I glanced down at my forearm and saw two ka vessels had illuminated. The girls were on the attack. I just hoped they’d be fast enough.
A long, ugly crack zigzagged across the temple’s floor like a bolt of black lightning, and the wahket wisely fled back to the dungeon’s passage. The ancient building rumbled and groaned as the ground it had rested on for so long became restless. The ceiling shuddered, and a few chunks of stone dislodged and crashed to the floor, where they shattered into dust.
I checked my arm again and let out a sigh of relief when I saw three vessels had been filled. More than halfway there. Just a few more dead scarabkin, and I could save us all.
A movement at the crack in the temple floor caught my eye, and I watched in horror as a long, bony arm reared up from the hole. The forearm alone was as thick around as my waist and longer than I was tall. A strange blue fire wreathed the ancient, withered limb, and I knew I did not want to see that creature’s face.
The wahket with me backed away from the tunnel’s edge and held their crossbows at the ready. They hadn’t broken ranks, but they did not want to fight that giant undead monstrosity when it finally pried itself free of whatever tomb had held it for so very long.
The monstrous hand slammed down on the temple’s floor, just inches from the stele. The enormous creature tried to drag itself free of its subterranean prison, and its pointed black nails dug thick furrows in the stone floor.
The top of a massive head rose above the level of the floor. The greasy mop of hair slapped against the stone as the monster flung its skull left and right, infuriated that it was still trapped.
“Come on,” I muttered to myself and checked my arm again.
Four ka vessels. One to go.
A second hand joined the first, and the hideous creature pulled itself up until one baleful eye glared into the mouth of the passage. There was an ageless misery in that stare, as well as an endless hunger that wanted nothing more than to devour everything in its path. In a few moments that insane beast would drag itself out of that hole and chow down on everything in its path.
Including the wahket.
“Fuck you,” I growled and offered up a silent prayer as I looked down at my forearm.
Five motes.
“Later, dickhead,” I shouted and activated the Claim Stele ability.
A wave of power rushed through me. It reminded me of the time I’d pissed on an electric fence as a dare. Every fiber of my being vibrated as the unearthly power rolled through me, and for a moment I was afraid I’d fucked up.
Then my vision cleared, and I watched in horror as the Buried King made a desperate lunge. The upper half of its torso erupted from the crack in the floor, and it babbled a string of nonsense words that made my thoughts hurt and my soul ache.
The wahket wailed in terror, and their crossbows twanged as they unleashed a desperate volley into the horrible creature’s chest. The bolts stuck in its flaccid flesh and unleashed torrents of black blood, but the thing didn’t seem to have noticed.
“Just die,” I begged the thing. “This is not your place any longer. It belongs to me. Begone!”
The stele pulsed with a blinding flash of white light, and the Buried King screamed. Ribbons of its flesh unspooled from its body and burned to ash. Its crazed eyes boiled in their sockets and burst into blossoms of crimson goo.
“I do not forget,” the thing promised me. Its arms gave out when the last word left its mouth, and the horror slipped back through the crack in the floor. A last gust of putrid black smoke gushed out of the hole in the floor, and it was gone.
I might have been able to repair the temple, since it was part of my territory now, but I didn’t want to. Any house of worship that venerated the hideous beast I’d seen didn’t have any place near me. I took a quick look at the Tablet of Engineering, made sure I’d calculated correctly, and then created a new dungeon chamber right on the temple grounds.
My new work shattered the temple’s walls, and their stones crashed against the roof of my dungeon. Columns collapsed, and chunks of the temple’s ceiling crashed to the floor. In seconds, I’d razed the place to the ground.
“Good riddance,” I said.
Exhaustion ran through me like a raging river. I knew I didn’t need to sleep, but I wanted to stop, to just rest for a moment.
But I knew I couldn’t.
“Neph,” I asked, “how goes the battle?”
“Good!” she answered in a tone that gave me a little of my energy back. She sounded not just happy, but triumphant. “Our pincer attack broke them. We killed a few, and then the rest panicked when that flash of lightning hit the temple. Zillah and her team have mopped up the few that tried to push back into the dungeon, so you should have a few more ka.”
I checked my forearm and saw three vessels lit. That was better than a sharp stick in the eye.
“Come to the temple,” I said. “Just follow the passage until you get here. We’re almost ready to move on the gate.”
“On our way,” Nephket said. “Can we have a mini-celebration?”
“Sure,” I said with a chuckle. “I think we’ve earned a little fun.”
Chapter 12: A Dark Decision
WE NEVER HAD THE CHANCE for that mini-celebration.
While Nephket and Zillah made their way through my tunnels to the new chamber I’d created to replace the temple, I checked the Tablet of Engineering.
And found the dark elf at the mouth of my dungeon. A pair of Guild guards blocked her path, but I knew they wouldn’t stand in her way for long. Kezakazek was nothing if not persuasive. And murderous.
The wahket burst into the new chamber singing a victorious song, and the crossbow women who’d killed the oracle joined them. Nephket and Zillah rushed to where I stood next to the stele, then slowed as they saw the look on my face.
“We have a problem,” I told them. “Kezakazek is headed for my core.”
“I’ll go kill her,” Zillah said. “There’s no way she can stand against me. I’ll tear that skinny bitch limb from limb and leave her head on the floor in front of your throne.”
“That’s a good idea, but there’s a problem,” I said. “I don’t have enough remaining volume to widen the passage behind us and open a path to the gate.”
“Then we’ll do both,” Nephket said. “We’ll hurry to the gate, destroy it, and then come back to kill Kezakazek. It will be close, but I think...”
“No,” I said. “I can’t make that gamble.”
“What would you have us do?” Nephket asked. “You’ve led us to one victory after another. How will we beat the Guild this time?”
“I need the two of you to lead the rest of the wahket to the Guild’s gate,” I said. “Zillah, use your vibration sense to scout for obstacles or other creatures. Neph, I’ll stay in contact with you so you can relay the i
nformation to me, and I’ll steer the passage accordingly. We need to end the passage right under the gate.”
Nephket blew out an exasperated sigh and crossed her hands over her chest.
“I’m your familiar,” she said. “I should be with you in this fight.”
“If it goes the way I’m expecting, there won’t be a fight,” I said.
“That’s optimistic of you,” Zillah said with a grin. “If Kezakazek is at the dungeon, it’s either because the Guild gave her permission to take another shot at it or because they’re too busy preparing for the extermination squad’s arrival to care what one skinny dark elf is up to. My guess is that they moved up the timetable, and the bad guys will be here soon.”
I cursed and ground my teeth in frustration. Of course. If the squad had almost arrived, that explained why the raiders had attacked the wahket, and why Kezakazek was trying to bully her way into my dungeon. All the little guys wanted their piece of the action before the big kids showed up to take the ball away.
“Good luck to both of you,” I said. “Nephket, you’re my eyes and ears. Work with Zillah. The two of you are the only hope I have to finish this in time.”
I gestured toward the far wall of the chamber I’d created, and a passage appeared. I called out to Pinchy and the rest of the scorpions, and they scurried across the floor to join me.
“Be careful,” Zillah said, her voice surprisingly subdued. “I won’t be there to protect you from the drow. She’s a tricky one, and it would be a shame if I had to return to the grove of withered trees and wait for a new employer.”
“Do not let her win,” Nephket added. “You are our dungeon lord now, Rathokhetra. There’s never been another like you, and there never will be again. Your time with me is not over.”
I wanted to say something snarky and clever, but a surprising amount of emotion welled up in me and choked off my words before I could say something stupid. Instead, I looped one arm around my familiar and the other around my dungeon’s boss monster and pulled them both in close.
They hugged me tight, Nephket’s face against my right cheek and Zillah’s against my left. The scorpion queen’s tail encircled the three of us and pulled us together even tighter.
“Now go kick that bitch’s ass, so we can have a party,” Zillah said.
“What she said,” Nephket added with a mischievous grin and a strange twinkle in her eye. “I have a lot to teach her about how to celebrate.”
“Teach me?” Zillah asked with a grin. “Oh, I’m all ears for this.”
“You can do this,” I told them both. “I know you can. We’ll be together again soon.”
“Not soon enough,” Zillah said. She leaned in and nipped at my earlobe with her sharp teeth.
We parted on that note, and I watched the two of them walk away hand in hand. There was something similar about those two, but I couldn’t put my finger on what.
“Okay, girl,” I said to Pinchy. “It’s time to kick some ass.”
Chapter 13: Intruders
IT TOOK ME MUCH LESS time to return to my dungeon than it had to reach the temple of the scarabkin. While I was not incarnated, a three-foot square passageway might as well have been a mile wide. Pinchy and her scorpion buddies rushed along with me, and we hurried back to my dungeon to deal with Kezakazek and her raider allies for what I hoped was the final time.
To my surprise, I found I’d gotten much better at splitting my consciousness between two tasks. I don’t know if it was some side benefit of being a dungeon lord or if my hacker’s skill at multitasking had finally decided it was time to represent, but I found myself able to route the passageway for Nephket and Zillah without slowing my own pace.
The constant updates from Nephket as she and Zillah followed the scorpion queen’s vibration sense toward the Guild’s gate should’ve been disorienting and confusing, but they’d become second nature to me. Nephket’s thoughts flowed into my brain like extensions of my mind and then vanished when I no longer needed the information they contained. In just the few days since I’d arrived on Soketra, everything about me had changed. I was different than I had been, better in many ways.
The cartel and their billion-dollar bounty seemed like pointless distractions from my real purpose in life, and I didn’t miss the money or the gangsters one little bit.
I also wasn’t going to miss the dark elf raider who seemed like she couldn’t stop being a pain in my ass.
By the time I rushed up the spiral ramp that led to the final passage to my dungeon, Kezakazek and her little buddies were halfway through the statue room, their eyes peeled for danger. They moved with the slow and careful pace of burglars, wary of any traps or monsters I’d left behind to guard my core.
I was very surprised to see that Kezakazek’s original squad had dared to return to my dungeon with her. They’d healed from the wounds I’d given them, thanks to the Guild’s clerics, but the gear they wore wasn’t as nice as what they’d been wearing when I’d slaughtered them.
Only the dark elf seemed unfazed by her change in circumstances and carried herself like royalty despite the literal rags that barely concealed her breasts and draped around her waist in a skirt that hid almost nothing. The hemp sandals she wore must not have fit her dainty feet from the way she half-limped every few steps.
“What’s the deal with this new construction?” Sheth asked from the bottom of the chasm that bisected the statue room. The fighter wore a battered breastplate with a baseball-sized dent over the heart and carried a longsword dotted with chips along its edges and scabs of rust across the flat of the blade. Poor bastard must not have been able to afford a hammer to replace the one I’d taken from him. “I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to like it,” Kezakazek snarled. “While the rest of the Guild prepares for the extermination squad’s arrival, we have a chance to loot this tomb. If we wait any longer, the execution squad will arrive and rob us of the core.”
“We aren’t supposed to be here,” Ristle pointed out. The gnome’s hair hadn’t grown back, and his scalp was covered with gnarled threads of pink scar tissue that I’d given him as souvenirs of his last visit to my little theme park. “The Guild will have all our licenses if they find out we broke the rules.”
“No one’s going to pull our license cards if we take the core,” Kezakazek scoffed. “They kept us out of here for our own safety, but if we take the core, we hardly needed the protection, now did we? We won’t be the first raiders who broke the rules and ended up showered with glory, and we won’t be the last.”
“You’ll end up showered in blood, you dicks,” I grumbled. The dark elf’s arrogance irritated me to no end. It was time to put an end to their fun and games.
I positioned myself by the statue that towered above the ladder at the end of the chasm and checked to make sure that its heels were still notched to make it easier to topple onto unsuspecting adventurers. I couldn’t touch the rope to reset the trap, much less trigger it, anyway, so dropping a single statue would have to be enough. If I waited until Kezakazek and her little raider party had started their ascent, most of them would be caught with nowhere to run. The heavy stone would crush them into adventurer jelly.
And with the gate no longer attuned to haul their sorry asses out of danger when they got a boo-boo, they’d be dead this time. Very, very dead.
Peska, the half-demon rogue, clambered up the ladder first. Sheth followed close behind her while Kezakazek waited her turn at the bottom of the channel and Ristle watched their backs.
“No traps so far,” the rogue said.
It was time to make a liar out of her.
I threw my weight against the statue’s back and shoved for all I was worth. If I shoved the chunk of stone just a little past its center of balance, the weight of the statue would do the rest. In my mind, I’d already heard the death cries of the dark elf and her companions.
But the statue wouldn’t move.
No matter how hard I shoved at the stone, i
t didn’t budge. The notches I’d made in the statue’s heels were still there, but the stone wahket remained as immobile as the dungeon’s walls.
“Goddamnit,” I cursed. I was stronger than the wahket who’d toppled these stone traps with ease. This shouldn’t have been so difficult.
And yet it was.
Pinchy and her scorpion friends scuttled around my feet, agitated by the intruders in the dungeon. I hadn’t wanted to use my smallest guardians in this attack because the arachnids weren’t strong in a straight-up fight, and it was dangerous to pit them against prepared adventurers. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like I’d have a choice in the matter. If Kezakazek and her cronies reached my core, everything I’d done would be for nothing. They’d wipe me out as surely as the Guild’s extermination squad.
“Kill the gnome,” I told the scorpions. “As soon as he gets on the ladder, sting him to death.”
The scorpions’ venom wasn’t deadly on its own, but each of their stings caused a minor wound. Enough of those would pile up to slaughter all but the strongest first-level adventurers. And my dungeon lord senses told me that Kezakazek, despite her cunning and ruthlessness, was still the lowest possible level of adventurer. Her companions were no stronger, and if I had my way, they never would be.
Peska helped Sheth clamber up the last few steps on the ladder, and the pair of them reached down to pull Kezakazek up with ease. The dark elf might be fierce and evil, but she was apparently as light as a feather.
“Hurry it up,” Peska called down to the gnome. “We don’t have all day to wait for your sorry ass, priest.”
“You could give me a hand,” the gnome started, but his words exploded into a high-pitched screech of pain. “Get them off! Get them off of me!”
But before any of his companions could lend a helping hand, Ristle let go of the ladder and fell back to the bottom of the chasm.
Pinchy and her stealthy scorpion assassins clung to the cleric’s body with their claws and plunged their stingers into the skin of his neck and face. Their tails pumped up and down like tiny oil derricks digging for Ristle’s blood.
