by Sean Oswald
Dave had no words for her. Once upon a time, maybe he would have tried to offer her some assurance that it was all going to be okay, but all he could say now was that he would do everything in his power to get Sara back. He pointed out that if this was incorporated into the dungeon, it meant that there was a chance to get Sara back. The dungeon had been difficult but never undoable.
None of that really mattered to Emily. Even saying it sounded flat and hollow to Dave. Still, he had to say it.
Emily reacted by saying, “What are we waiting for? Sara is running out of time.” She wiped her eyes against her shoulder and tried to act as if she hadn’t been screaming just a minute before. Even as she said these words, they were all made aware of a countdown that sprang up on their characters sheets: 57:32
“Cast heal spells again, and then we move out. Steffen are you able to go on?” Dave asked.
“I have come to consider you a friend. I would no more leave your child to the mercies of this dungeon than I would leave Tabor or any other of my children. We are with you my friend,” the baron said. Gunidar groaned but fell in behind the man.
Tode said, “I’ve never been one to stay still long enough in one place to raise a family, but investigating I did in Eris’ Rise showed me that your daughter is a special child. The whole town loves her. Sure, in part because she is the baron’s daughter, but she has won them over with her own nature too. I suppose if I was ever going to have a child, then I would hope she would be just like what I’ve heard about Sara.”
“Bairns ur a precious gift made fae a man’s ain forge. If ye can’t keep yer masterwork safe, then whit sort o’ smith kin ye be,” Ro’Billo added.
Rak’kar snorted something about the adventurers being willing to go if for nothing more than the promise of rare loot, and Daichi affirmed his devotion to Emily and her line. Thus, it didn’t take more than a couple of minutes to finish healing spells, and then they were off and looking for Sara.
Sara didn’t like the dark even though she could see fairly well in it, even more so since Krinnk became her friend. This place felt hostile now. The inviting sensation she had when she went down the stairs was entirely gone.
Then she saw torches. Someone was coming down the hallway. The closer they got, the more nervous she became. They were large. Oh, and they sorta looked like those horned hounds her dad had fought in the forest. They had horns like unicorns. She liked unicorns. Wait, though, unicorns didn’t have scales. They didn’t have sharp pointed teeth. Without being able to put words to it, Sara felt like Little Red Riding hood discovering just why grandma has such big teeth.
The first two carried swords, but they parted and allowed another in robes to walk up close to her. Krinnk had his stone dagger out and was trying to place himself between her and the scary monster men.
The robed one spoke, and its gruff voice said, “You will come with us.”
“Umm … no. I can’t go with strangers. Please, just let me and my friend go.” A more mature Sara might have felt embarrassed that she would even say such a naive thing. This Sara though was an eight-year-old girl, and she was just proud of herself for not crying. She wanted to cry though. She wanted her mommy. She wanted her daddy. He would smash these ugly things.
The wicked laughter of the monster man made her shiver and clutch Krinnk. “You will come with us, or this one will die,” he said as he pointed at Krinnk.
“Krinnk no afraid die. Krinnk protect Sara.”
A toothy grin made Krinnk shut up and brought tears to Sara’s eyes. “If your name is Krinnk, little goblin, then Krinnk won’t be protecting anyone. Krinnk will be screaming I think.”
Then the robed man made some gestures and said some words like she had watched her parents and sister do. A red pulsing star appeared against the palm of his outstretched hand with its clawed fingertips. The hand was held out as if to touch Krinnk, and then the red star flashed out and struck her friend. Immediately, the goblin scout fell to the floor writhing. He began crying out in pain. Sara felt cut to the chase, not with physical pain, but with her empathy for Krinnk.
“Stop it, stop it you monster. Leave him alone. Krinnk didn’t do anything wrong.” Sara’s cries were desperate as she knelt next to her friend but couldn’t do anything to stop the spasms wracking his body.
“A few seconds of that spell, and your little friend will eat you if I tell him too. Are you sure you don’t want me to spare you and kill him for you now?” the creature's guttural voice asked.
“Krrinnk nno … neveer hurz Ssaaraa,” the goblin scout groaned out through gritted teeth.
“Hmm impressive. I’ve never seen a goblin be loyal to anyone but itself before. But it doesn’t matter. Under the effects of Altracia’s Vise, everyone breaks. They always do.”
“Stop it. If you leave him alone, I will come with you,” Sara pleaded.
“So if I stop torturing your little pet, then you promise to do as you are told?”
“He isn’t my pet. Just stop hurting him, and I will do whatever you want.”
“Very well.” Then with a wave of his hand, the spell came to an end, and Krinnk stopped trembling. “Maybe we were too late. I think this one popped,” the caster said as the rank smell of goblin crap wafted up to all of them. The warriors simply laughed at the joke as Sara tried to help Krinnk, giving him a drink of water from his water skin.
“Now you will follow us. The Mistress wishes to meet you. She has ordered us to bring you to her in one piece, but she has not given any instructions about this thing,” he said as he gestured at the goblin scout.
The raid party was moving faster than Dave felt comfortable with when moving through the twisted hallways of a dungeon, but still, the pace was so slow as to chaff him. Almost twenty minutes had passed. They had run into three clusters of drake hounds. Each had been fairly organized and consisted of half a dozen warriors and at least one caster. Not a single cluster lasted long. Dave rushed in each time, and both Daichi and Rak’kar took their cues from him. Even Emily would step up and stab any of the creatures who dared to turn a back towards her.
Gunidar urged caution at every turn and kept arguing that if they died, they would never be able to save Sara. Tode echoed part of what he said, but said it differently. He would say that they had run into timed traps before and that the key was never simply speed but also a deliberate attention to the details.
All that earned them was glares from Mira and Jackson as well as a scathing tone from Emily. “When it is your daughter, you can urge caution. Until then, use your skills to be deliberate, I am going to use my mother’s instinct to find her.”
Dave knew that it wasn’t simple mother’s instinct but the ring that they had given her which allowed her mother to track her. Emily would be able to find her unerringly no matter how many twists and turns the dungeon threw at them. Dave understood the urgent need for speed, and despite the ease with which they were cutting down the creatures, each batch still caused a delay.
When they turned the next corner, they stumbled upon the largest group yet, and Emily cried out, “They have Sara!”
Sure enough, Sara was there, looking relatively unharmed if terrified. Krinnk didn’t look in good shape but seemed to still be alive if trussed up like a pig for luau. Dave took a quick glance before casting a quickened Minor Enlarge spell and charging in. The front row was a full eight drake hound warriors with an assortment of weapons ranging from halberds to shorts words. Behind them were two more warriors holding their prisoners and four robed casters.
Before Dave could even reach the front row, Rak’kar barreled past him. The metallic disc on his chest had expanded to cover him in head to toe armor. The bull man’s body became a weapon, and he bowled over half a dozen of the drake hounds. Yet these were high Tier 3 warriors and not to be taken lightly. They quickly regained their feet. Dave found himself pressed by the two fighting him. One wielded a spear and the other a wicked curved short sword. The first was keeping him busy so that even with
his increased size he wasn’t able to get around the reach of the spear.
Further, his size was becoming a detriment to the others. He took a pair of spells in the chest. One an ice spell and the other a shocking spell. Dave was able to shake off the shock of the electric but felt the cold seeping into his veins causing him to slow. He didn’t have time to look to see if he had a formal debuff. It didn’t really matter–all that mattered was he had to find a way to fight harder. He swung blows as quickly as he could without over committing and getting skewered.
Meanwhile, Steffen and War Monster were each engaged with one of the creatures. Ro’Billo and the boys were tag teaming another while Rak’kar had the rest occupied, either being crushed under his hoof or foot or whatever you called that thing at the end of his leg or futilely banging against his armor.
The mages weren’t left out of it as Emily was throwing heals as fast as she could and Mira, Tode, and Gunidar were trading spells with the four drake hound casters in the rear. Dave couldn’t spare much attention but trusted that their casters were stronger, but they were also handicapped by the need to not harm Sara. As it was, the two sides kept trading volleys. First, the enemy casters sent a wave of magical missiles flying through the air at Ro’Billo and the boys. Magic missiles never miss, and with a flight of some twenty missiles incoming, the potential for serious harm was great. However, Gunidar quick cast some strange spell that created a set of mirrors which popped in and out of existence and stopped each of the enemy darts, even reflecting some back at their source.
In response to the attack, Tode and Mira both cast charm magic seeking to take control of a couple of the warriors, but just as the spell forms settled onto their intended targets, a pair of the drake hound casters launched a spell that made some type of super loud static like noise. Both Tode and Mira’s spells crumbled. The only good thing being that it had caused enough delay for Dave to behead the spear-wielding hound he faced and for Ro’Billo to finally deliver a fatal blow to his opponent.
After that, a pair of fireballs burst forth only to be met by a runic shield from Tode and a wave of ice from Mira. Gunidar was the first to strike a decisive blow between the mages as he conjured a hand of stone the size of a man which burst up from the raw stone floor of the dungeon and crushed one of the enemy casters against the wall. It wasn’t a fatal blow, but it kept him pinned. Ro’Billo displayed why he was an expert adventurer as he saw the helpless enemy and quickly fired his crossbow, butting a quarrel into the creature’s throat, either killing it or stopping it from any further casting.
Panic set into the remaining casters, and their leader ran with one of the other casters and the two warriors who carried the prisoners. As soon as they were past the mouth of another tunnel, he slammed his staff into the ground and called upon an earthen magic spell stored in it. The spell erected a stone wall across the entrance to this tunnel and blocked them from the sight of the party.
Seeing that Sara’s captors were getting away, Dave took a risk and used his mass to shoulder tackle the drake hound he was fighting. A frenzied Jackson helped and landed a series of punches that turned the creatures face into a bloodied mess.
The one caster who remained on this side of the stone wall started casting some grand spell but suddenly was plunged into eerie quiet as were the rest of them. Tode cast a sphere of pure silence, and Dave couldn’t help but think of Max but didn’t allow it to slow him as a cutting slash of his sword separated the clawed hands from the caster’s arms. A second later, Emily shoved the mage-killing dagger into the softer scales at the underside of the creature’s elongated snout. Dave was shocked by the sheer brutality of such a killing blow. The silence which reigned seemed perfectly in sync with the way the magic of her dagger snuffed out the life force of her target.
Once their last caster had fallen, the remaining drake hound warriors didn’t last long. After a couple of hand gestures from Dave, Tode dropped the sphere of silence. “That’s a useful spell. Remind me to talk to you about ways to deal with that.” The blue robed mage just winked back in response.
They took stock of where everyone was as Emily was already feeling up against the rock wall looking for any cracks or other openings. Dave noticed that Daichi wasn’t anywhere to be found.
“That’s simple,” Mira said. “I cast Invisibility on him and asked him to sneak up next to Sara. He must be on the other side of the wall, probably waiting for an opportunity.”
Emily still had tears of frustration in her eyes but she grabbed Mira, hugging her as she said, “That was so smart. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
Dave shared Emily’s pride in their daughter’s ingenuity but also saw that the timer read 28:16 and was beginning to worry about the time necessary to get past this wall.
Sara had wanted to cry out when she saw her parents fighting to reach her, but the cloth gagging her mouth kept her from saying anything. Her hope kept rising as she saw her dad getting closer and closer to her. She didn’t know anything about magic or fighting, but even to her eyes, it appeared that her family and the people with them were winning. Then the big meanie cheated, and they ran. Somehow a rock wall popped up between them and her family.
She had been trying to be brave, but seeing her family and then watching them be shut off from her reduced Sara to tears. Even poor Krinnk was tied up and unable to comfort her, but he did jerk around again when he saw her tears. That led one of the guards to kick his head. Sara would have cried more, but she was learning the lesson that the best way to protect Krinnk was to cause as little disturbance as possible.
A short time later, after passing down a few more winding hallways, Sara felt an aura of dread growing. It wasn’t like the fear she had felt before; it was this impending sense of doom, a certainty that something bad was about to happen. The feeling was foreign to Sara who usually hung tightly to hope even in dire circumstances. Perhaps it was just her childish naivety or perhaps it was an inborn gift, but she always could see a happy ending to everything. Now, though, that usual belief in a silver lining felt smothered as though by a wet blanket.
It was then that they entered a large circular room that rose up into a dome. The ceiling was too high up for her to figure out how high it could be, but it reminded her of the buildings when mommy had taken her to Chicago for a girls trip. The room didn’t have the same type of worked brick walls but instead was just like a cave. Colors danced along the wall almost like when she had gone to Meramec Caverns. Then she realized what the colors were. They were the light from a large bonfire reflected off the scales of the biggest lizard she had ever seen.
Sara knew a dragon when she saw one, and a part of her wanted to jump up for joy. They might not be as cool as unicorns or fairies, but dragons were always exciting in her cartoons. It wasn’t so easy to be excited though as just looking at the green scales of the creature made shivers run down her spine. It was almost as though waves of fear rolled off of the creature, but Sara couldn’t understand why that should be.
Then, the spell was broken as the creature did the most magical thing that Sara could imagine. It spoke. “Hello little elfling. Welcome to my home. I am Altracia, Mistress of this dungeon.” Its voice was deep and sibilant with almost a hiss to it.
Not quite knowing what to do, Sara curtsied like her mother had shown her once. She tried to say something but was still gagged by the cloth they had placed in her mouth.
“Remove the gag. I wish to hear the little elfling’s voice. She seems polite at least.”
Once the cloth was removed, Sara started spitting to try to get the icky taste out of her mouth. Then she remembered her manners. She curtsied again while saying, “It is a pleasure to meet you. I’m sorry, do I call you a queen or lady? I’m sorry I think you are a lady. Oh, but if you aren’t, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. You see, it’s just that I have never spoken to a dragon before.”
Sara’s words had jumbled out in a rush, and unexpectedly, the great creature broke out into a deep
laughter. The sound of it echoed all around the cavern so that it almost sounded like it was coming from all directions at once. Something about being laughed at after she had tried her very best to be polite offended Sara’s sensibilities. She stomped her petite foot and with hands upon her hips did her best impression of her mother when someone needed scolding. “Don’t you know it isn’t nice to laugh at people? Not when they are trying to be nice to you.”
If anything, this caused the creature to laugh even more. “Oh sweet child, I do like you.” Its laughter had stopped entirely, and it spoke slowly, wistfully. “If only …” Then it turned its head mid-statement as if listening to a distant voice only it could hear. “But we can each only be that which we are. I am female as you correctly surmised, at least I was. Yet I am no dragon, but thank you for the kind comparison. I am a lowly forest drake become dungeon drake become dungeon core. Now both less and more than my grand cousins.”
Sara was confused by the words the creature, or drake as it said, was speaking. That much must have been apparent upon her face for the creature spoke again. “Still, I like you. You are both brave and courteous, all too rare of a combination.” She snorted as she looked at the drake hounds before continuing, “You may call me, Altracia. I give you the gift of calling me by my name, since I like you so.”
“If it is all the same, Lady Altracia, if you wish to give me a gift, might I ask that you release my friend, Krinnk and I. I would very much like to see my parents again.”
A big toothy grin passed the drake’s lips as she flashed teeth nearly as long as Sara’s forearms. “As I said, we can all only be that which we are. I am Mistress of this place, and you are bait in a trap, audacious bait, but bait all the same.”
The words sunk in, and Sara didn’t understand completely, but she had gone fishing that once with her father and knew what bait was. She didn’t really like being compared to those wiggly worms. She had thought they were gross at first, but in the end had felt nothing but sorrow for them as she had watched her dad and brother impale them upon hooks. No, she did not like the idea of being bait. She did not like it one little bit.
