by Nick Harrow
The gnome screamed as the scorpion venom coursed through his veins and blinded him. He struggled to cast a healing spell to stitch up his wounds, but Pinchy was having none of that. Her claws reached past Ristle’s lips and snatched his wagging tongue.
Ristle slapped at his own face in a vain attempt to dislodge Pinchy, but she easily dodged his clumsy hands and positioned herself for the fatal blow.
The gnome screamed, and my favorite scorpion plunged her stinger deep into his throat.
“Son of a bitch,” Peska shouted. “Those little bastards killed our priest.”
The rogue’s hands flew to the bandolier of throwing knives strapped across her chest, and she flung a pair of daggers down toward Pinchy and the rest of the scorpions.
“Get out of there!” I called to the scorpions, but it was too late.
Both daggers caught one of my guardians and pinned it to the dead gnome’s chest. The scorpion’s tiny legs curled in around its torso and its tail slapped against Ristle’s face with a chitinous crack.
“You’re going to pay for that,” I said to the adventurers. The Dungeon Speaks ability transformed my voice into a suitably creepy croak, like something out of a Vincent Price movie.
“Show yourself,” Kezakazek barked. “Or hide in the shadows like a coward while I steal your core out from under your nose. It matters not to me.”
The dark elf’s cocky attitude, combined with my anger at my guardian’s pain, pushed me over the edge. I’d cut this damned drow’s head off her shoulders.
My khopesh appeared in my hand, and its comforting weight ignited my fury. That dead scorpion would rise again, but these treasure-hunter dickheads had hurt one of mine. That would not stand.
I covered the distance between the statue and the adventurers in a full run, my khopesh cocked back over my shoulder. All the burning rage in my heart powered that swing, and I stepped into it like a heavyweight slugger leaning into a grand slam.
[[[A dungeon lord is incapable of directly harming raiders while disincarnated.]]]
Okay, I’ll admit it. That was sort of embarrassing.
I was thankful the raiders hadn’t seen me with my khopesh right through their sorceress’s head. I’d let my anger get the best of me, and I couldn’t afford to do that again.
I could, however, do some spooky ghost shit. My hand brushed across Kezakazek’s face, and she shivered like I’d just dropped an ice cube down the back of her skimpy skirt.
“Tricks won’t stop me,” she said. “I will have that core.”
For a moment, I considered sending Pinchy and her buddies after the raiders again. I stopped myself at the last moment and collected my thoughts. Sure, it’d feel great to send the scorpions straight at the raiders, and Pinchy wouldn’t hesitate to follow my orders.
But it would be a dumb move. The scorpions were very effective in a surprise attack, but against prepared fighters they’d get cut to ribbons. I did not want to see Pinchy killed by one of Kezakazek’s acid balls or the rogue’s flung daggers. The guardians were my allies, and I wouldn’t cause them pain if I could avoid it.
There were still tricks hidden up my sleeve. I just had to be smart about how I deployed them.
While I debated my next stratagem, the dark elf led the rest of the raiders out of the statue room. The passages in the tomb were still just three feet wide and tall, which would slow the raiders down some, but it wouldn’t stop them. While Sheth and Peska grumbled about having to crawl through the dungeon, Kezakazek urged them forward.
If I didn’t kill that dark elf, her raw determination would push her to the top of the Raiders Guild in no time.
I considered my options and wished for better ones.
My dungeon was laid out like a temple, not a fortress. It was a straight shot from the front door all the way to the burial chamber that held my core. If the guardians were around, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but seeing as how I’d sent Nephket, Zillah, and the rest of the wahket off to deal with the gate, my ass was out in the wind at that particular moment.
Something Nephket had said tickled my memories, and I felt a slow smile spread across my face.
I might not be able to stop the raiders from reaching the core on my own, but I could delay them. And if Nephket and Zillah shut the gate down and got back here, they and the rest of the wahket would be more than a match for Kezakazek and her little friends. I didn’t have to kill the adventurers, I just had to slow them down.
And I knew just how to do that.
I pulled up the Tablet of Transformation and quickly checked how much loot I had left in my sarcophagus. There was almost fifteen hundred gold pieces of assorted treasure in my dungeon, which was an impressive amount for first-level raiders. I moved past the intruders as they crawled down the passage to the south of the statue chamber and positioned myself at the intersection with the passage that led east to Pinchy’s lair.
In the blink of an eye, I used the tablet to convert all the loot into a mixture of gold pieces and gemstones. I positioned a few of the choicest bits in the intersection where Peska couldn’t help but see them from her position at the front of the raiders’ party. Then I created a trail of scattered goodies all the way to the scorpions’ lair. I dumped the rest of the treasure, an impressive mound of golden coins and precious stones, just inside the lair’s doorway. Torches still burned in the tomb’s hallways, and in their light that pile looked damned sexy, if I do say so myself.
“Get ready for part two,” I said to Pinchy. She clicked her claws together and scampered up to her lair’s ceiling with her friends. They were just as angry as I’d been at the death of their companion and were eager for vengeance.
Nephket’s mind brushed against mine, and I guided the tunnel around the edge of a string of caverns that Zillah’s vibration sense had detected. The wahket had made much better time than I’d anticipated on their approach to the Guild’s gate, but the cat women still weren’t in a position to send help back to the tomb. When they attacked the gate, they’d need every spear and crossbow to deal with the guards the raiders had surely stationed around the portal.
I still wasn’t sure how Nephket and Zillah would destroy the damned gate, but we’d burn that bridge when we got to it.
“There’s gold here,” the rogue called out. She was a few yards ahead of the rest of her group and crouched against the dungeon’s wall while she waited for them to catch up. “And more of it down this side passage. I say we loot the place for all its worth. I need every coin I can find to replace the armor I lost here last time.”
“No,” Kezakazek said. “We’re here for the core. Don’t get distracted by a few baubles.”
“I’m not distracted,” Sheth said. “But Peska’s right; she and I need to replace the gear we lost. She’s quick. Let her clean out this tunnel, so we have something for our trouble. The core won’t buy me a new hammer, and it sure as hell won’t buy us any booze.”
“I’m with Sheth,” Peska said. “We already lost our cleric. Better to take what we can. I won’t leave empty-handed again.”
“You’re fools,” the drow sighed. “You’d risk everything for a few gold pieces?”
I could almost feel Kezakazek’s anger at her companions’ shortsighted greed.
But in the end, greed won out over common sense.
“It’ll take me two minutes to loot this tunnel,” Peska said. “If I see any trouble, I’ll run right back.”
“I’m searching you to make sure you’re not cheating me when you get back,” Sheth said. “Thoroughly.”
The half-demon rogue responded with a sultry laugh that sent a tingle up my spine. I couldn’t deny that monster girls ticked all my fantasy boxes.
“When we get back to town, you can check me,” she said. “Everywhere.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” Sheth called after the rogue.
“Animals,” Kezakazek spat.
The rogue chuckled to herself as she scampered down the hall. She scooped u
p coins and gemstones with every crouched step and stowed the treasure in her belt pouches. When she neared the mound of treasure I’d left just inside the scorpions’ lair, though, she stopped and let out a long, low whistle.
“You kids are not going to believe what I just found,” Peska called back to her companions. “We’re gonna be so rich.”
The half-demon eased up next to the entrance of the scorpions’ lair and checked for traps with every inch she covered. She slipped her backpack off her shoulders and dropped it onto the floor next to her. Her nimble fingers flipped the pack’s flap open, and she positioned it where it would be easiest for her to scoop the loot into its empty guts.
Her slit-pupiled eyes scanned the stone in front of her for any signs of a trap she hadn’t detected. The torchlight in the hallway and the lair gave the rogue more than enough light, and she nodded as she took in the scene.
“All right,” the half-demon whispered to herself. “Come to your filthy mama.”
“Wait for it,” I cautioned Pinchy.
My favorite scorpion was agitated and wanted to strike immediately, but she held her position at my words.
The rogue planted her backpack right next to the treasure, then leaned forward to scoop up a heavy double handful of gold coins and gemstones.
“Now,” I said.
Pinchy and the rest of the scorpions plunged from their ceiling perches like tiny Airborne Rangers. They landed on the rogue’s back, and she hardly noticed their lightweight slapping against the hard leather of her armor. The way she’d bent over the loot left Peska’s neck and lower back exposed above and below the bands of stiffened leather armor that covered the rest of her torso. In the blink of an eye, the scorpions found these tender undefended spots and buried their stingers deep in her flesh.
“No one steals from me,” I whispered into the rogue’s ear.
Peska gulped as the venom coursed through her body and the scorpions’ stingers tore her flesh. Coins fell from her hands as she clawed at her eyes and wept streams of thick, green tears.
“Sheth,” she whimpered. “Help.”
But Peska’s voice was far too weak for her companions to hear. She turned away from the treasure and tried to crawl back to them, but Pinchy’s stinger found the soft spot just behind Peska’s left ear and ended her life with a final thrust. The half-demon’s bladder let go as her brain misfired, and she fell into a growing puddle of reeking piss.
The sorceress and the warrior couldn’t see the fate of the rogue around the bend in the corridor, so I assumed it would be a few moments before they came looking for their dead friend. I took that time to check in with Nephket and Zillah, who’d made some good progress.
“We’re close,” Nephket said. “We haven’t run into any creatures. No more caverns or pits. How are things with you?”
“So far, so good,” I said. “Two dead raiders out of four. And it looks like I picked up a couple of motes of ka in the process. Their lives are certainly worth more when there’s no gate to save them from a true death.”
“That’s true,” Nephket said. “Though Zillah says that permanently killing raiders like that is bound to piss off the Guild.”
“Good,” I said. “They pissed me off first. There won’t be anything they can do about it after we close the gate, anyway.”
“You’re probably right,” Nephket said. “Losing a whole raid force to a level-one dungeon— “
“A second-level dungeon, if you don’t mind,” I corrected.
“—to a second-level dungeon won’t look good to the Guild’s higher-ups,” she said. “It took a lot of time and money to open this gate in the first place, and I doubt they’ll throw good money after bad on Soketra. With any luck they’ll pretend they never heard of us, and we’ll never see them again.”
I didn’t really think that would be the case, but I was fairly certain the Guild would not want to stick their paw in this bear trap again for a while. It sounded like the Guild was run by bean counters, and sending more fresh meat into the grinder here was not a good investment.
And if they did decide to come looking for trouble, well, that was a problem for future me, who was probably going to be a hell of a lot more powerful than present me.
“Gotta finish off these raiders,” I said to Nephket. “Hit me up if you need anything.”
“Just keep the path open for us, and we’ll do the rest,” Nephket assured me.
Just before we broke the connection, I felt Zillah’s familiar presence, like the smell of a woman’s perfume just after she’d left the room. Did that mean Nephket had the scorpion queen on her mind?
“Shit,” I heard Sheth say. “I can see Peska. She’s down.”
The warrior had crawled up the hallway in search of his girlfriend. He had his sword out, but he’d wisely stopped as soon as he’d seen the half-demon rogue twisted up on the floor in front of the mound of treasure that had been her undoing. I sensed the war of emotions within him. He wanted to know what had happened to Peska, but he didn’t want it to happen to him.
I lowered the lights in the hallway and killed them completely in the lair. I didn’t want the scorpions to face off against a ready warrior, but if he were stupid enough to come in blind, they’d have enough of an advantage to kill the fool.
“I told you,” Kezakazek said from the intersection behind Sheth. She sounded both pissed and exhausted. “Leave her. Let’s get the core and leave.”
“That is a lot of treasure to leave behind,” Sheth argued.
The dark elf crawled up next to the warrior and jabbed a finger toward the fallen rogue.
“What happened to her?” Kezakazek asked pointedly. “Was the treasure worth her life? Is it worth yours?”
Sheth hesitated for a moment and then shook his head. His shaggy hair drifted down over his face, and his scarred knuckles popped as he clenched his sword’s hilt tighter.
“No,” he said. “You’re right. Let’s get the core. It’s time for this fucking place to die.”
I whistled as I walked down the hallway, an eerie, tuneless sound that gave even me a little shiver. The raiders must have peed in their pants, just a little, because they jerked their heads to face the darkness of the lair and moved a little closer to one another. Even Kezakazek, the bravest little drow, seemed unnerved by the sound.
“And then there were two,” I said. “Just a pair of baby raiders, all alone with the big bad dungeon lord. This is your final warning: Leave my tomb. Now.”
“If you could have killed us, you would have already,” Kezakazek shouted, as if the volume of the words would convince her they were true.
But beneath the drow’s rage and bravado, I felt the cold tendril of fear that had wrapped itself around her heart. Despite the terror that gripped her, the drow held her ground.
I didn’t know why she wanted the core so badly, but whatever the reason, it had given her more grit than I’d expected. It was clear Kezakazek was either leaving with the core, or she wasn’t leaving at all.
I suspected she was fine with that either way.
I moved down the hallway until I stood almost on top of Kezakazek. Our bodies overlapped, and the heat of her breasts and hips soaked into my immaterial form. She shivered, and her head whipped from side to side as her eyes opened wide. Goose pimples rose from her skin where we touched, and she hugged herself in a futile attempt to warm her body.
“I like to play with my food,” I said to her, my spectral lips pressed against the curve of her pointed ear. “And I’m going to enjoy eating you an inch at a time.”
The dark elf flinched at my words, and sparks of magic danced from her fingertips. She flung her hand out, and a mystical blue claw erupted from her palm. Ice crystals dripped from the hooked fingers as they blindly raked the air in front of the sorceress. It was an impressive display of a spell I hadn’t seen before, but the arcane attack was as powerless to harm me as I was to wound the raiders directly.
“You can’t stop me,” the dar
k elf said. She turned away from the scorpions’ lair. “Come on, Sheth, before something happens to you, too.”
I laughed again, and the warrior hurried to catch up to the drow.
Despite my success so far, though, Kezakazek was partly right. I couldn’t stop them personally, and I didn’t like Pinchy’s chances against the raiders now that they were in full-on paranoid mode. Kezakazek’s nasty new spell hadn’t been able to hurt me, but I didn’t want to give the dark elf a chance to unleash it on my little friends. The warrior didn’t look like much, but it would only take one lucky shot from him to kill one of the scorpions.
No, direct confrontation was out of the question. For now, the best I could do was delay the raiders while I worked on a more permanent solution to their annoying lives.
My first move was to raise all the chamber entrances up near the ceiling. The raiders had a difficult time crawling through the low-ceilinged passages, and they’d have an even more difficult time if they had to climb into and out of each of my dungeon’s rooms. The chambers’ ceilings were only ten feet high, which was too low to hurt Kezakazek or Sheth even if they fell out of the tunnels, but the new layout would be a huge pain in their asses. The warrior could barely reach the lip of the now raised passages from inside a chamber, and he’d be forced to help Kezakazek clamber up into them.
It would take them at least twice as long to navigate the dungeon. I had a little more breathing room to put a new plan into action.
While the intrusive duo worked their way through my dungeon, I thought about the best ways to get rid of them. If I had more ka, I could litter the tomb with traps. Without a rogue or priest, every injury would slowly wear Kezakazek and Sheth down until they either gave up and retreated or died.
Unfortunately, I only had five ka, which was enough for exactly one trap. While that was a tempting use of my precious energy reserves, it wouldn’t be enough to kill both of the raiders.
Sheth dropped out of the entrance to my audience chamber and waited for Kezakazek to catch up so he could help her to the floor. Even with the obstacles I’d put in their way, the raiders still made better time than I’d hoped.
