“We’re clear,” said Shadow. “I sense the narkleer, but no other dangers.”
As Brecht emerged through the hole and into this unexplored terrain, I was surprised at what I saw.
I’d already considered the possibility that there was another dungeon right next to mine, given the narkleer’s presence. But as dungeons went, the workmanship of this one made my lair look like a mole’s burrow.
My dungeon was a practical one. My miners dug tunnels under my direction, and there was little decoration unless you counted the tiles near the surface door, but those were a trap. I hadn’t placed them there to spruce the place up.
But this dungeon, the little of it I saw as Brecht took tentative steps inside, was a marvel. With a vaulted ceiling and tunnels made from ice-blue stone and decorated with a dazzle of masonic carvings and sculptures, it was hard to know which part to focus on first.
So many things caught my eye; a great statue of Aedina, the blind, one-winged demoness. Stone archways marking a tunnel at the end of the room, the curves geometrically perfect and adorned with runemarks.
I used my core vision and smell now, experiencing the dungeon as Brecht did. I smelled dust and age. An odor that brought a flash of memory to mind; that of a grand museum.
Wow. I hadn’t visited a museum as a core, so that shudder of recollection must have been from my old life. This dungeon was so intoxicating that it was conjuring the last fragmental memories of my old life as a human.
The core who had made this place must have been powerful, and there was no doubt that he’d possessed a mastery of dungeon building. The pretty parts of it, at least.
So, what had happened to the core here?
“Be careful,” I said, using my core voice. “There might be traps. Shadow, can you warn them if you detect any?”
“No sign of the narkleer,” said Tarius.
“Wylie will find him, and Wylie will smash him,” said the enraged kobold, his voice dripping with the fury of the dust.
Shadow went on ahead, focused on the first archway of the tunnel nearby. Wylie was the next to follow her, walking at a fully-blown strut.
“The narkleer will be patrolling a set route,” I said. “He must have been here when you broke through the wall, and now he’s further into the dungeon. Dylan was unfortunate to enter just as the narkleer passed through.”
“Narkleer will be unfortunate one,” growled Wylie.
They pressed on, Tarius and Karson holding the mirrors, Brecht gripping his tambourine, with Wylie in charge of the grain sack.
They passed through another tunnel, following it as it curved right.
“Brecht, can you look around as you walk?” I asked. “I want to see the carvings.”
He glanced at the shapes and images chipped into the blue stone, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that these told a story. It was hard to know what, without having more time to study them, but it told me something.
The core who built this dungeon was a vain one, since I would have gambled my last kobold on the carvings telling the story of the dungeon’s creation. Some cores did this as their signature; deprived of individuality when resurrected into the core bodies, they expressed themselves through their lair.
But not only that. This was something only a dungeon scholar such as me would be aware of, but you could judge a dungeon’s age by its style. Nowadays, most cores leaned toward practical dungeons, ones designed to inflict maximum pain and carnage.
Around 150-200 years ago, however, dungeon cores went through what is known as the Corenaissance, where cores designed their lairs not just to kill heroes, but to also look pretty.
Well, maybe pretty isn’t the right word. Some of the carvings in this place would have looked perfect in the tomb of some king who snuffed it long ago, or a dead saint revered for being kind to frogs or something equally stupid and pious. There was something ancient and grim about them.
“Wylie sees it!”
Through Brecht’s eyes, I could see Wylie ahead of the others, but I couldn’t make out anything beyond him.
“Catch up to him,” I told Brecht.
The kobold hurried on, and soon I saw what Wylie was looking at.
“The narkleer,” whispered Tarius.
Yes, there it was. Eight feet tall, with the tip of its bleached skull not far from the domed ceiling. It was facing away from us, so all I could see was its great wedge of skin flapping from its back like a cannibal’s cape. The skin would have turned most people’s stomachs with its hodge-podge of flesh colors, taken from the various creatures it had eaten, and its pale veins bulging on the surface.
Seeing one up close, or through a kobold who was close to it, was much different from reading about it in books. I understood now how the skin flaps served as warnings to predators; they looked absolutely revolting. I really, really wanted a skin cape of my own.
Brecht backed away a step. Tarius and Karson stood shoulder to shoulder, and even Wylie’s transfusion of anger couldn’t overcome the effect the sight of this thing had on him.
The jelly hovered nearby, though it was already starting to change color. As I’d expected, when I used the alchemy chamber to take away the jelly’s inner elemental, I left it empty. Now, it soaked up the narkleer’s fatal invisible energy, protecting the kobolds.
The blob took on a black hue, like water stained by an octopus’s ink. It would guard the kobolds against damage, but not for long.
“No time to mess around, you yellow bellies,” I said. “Not to alarm you, but every second you spend in this creature’s presence is precious. And if the jelly fills up, or if the narkleer turns around before you…well, best not to think about it. Remember the plan, execute it with utter precision, and you’ll be fine. Brecht?”
Brecht took a second to gather himself. Being a bard, he was a little sturdier mentally than the others, and the jelly anger dust had taken the edge off his fear. Even so, I could tell he was worried.
He unslung his tambourine strap from his shoulder and quietly set the instrument on the ground.
“You’re a good friend,” Tarius whispered to Karson. “If this gets Beno’d up, if we don’t leave this place, I want you to know that.”
“You too,” said Karson. “And if I die, you can have my topknot. Just snip it off.”
“Shut mouths,” hissed Wylie.
Brecht’s hands hovered inches above his tambourine as he prepared himself.
The narkleer lurched down the tunnel, taking slow steps away from us, locked in an endless patrol that might have gone on for hundreds of years.
As I’d expected, it hadn’t sensed the kobolds behind it. With an insanity-inducing stare, telepathic disemboweling, and dark energy around it, it was too powerful a creature not to have a glaring weakness. Every creature had them, and physical senses were the narkleer’s.
This was still dangerous as hell, but it had to work. If Brecht failed, and if the narkleer turned around and locked eyes with my kobolds, his gaze would be enough to send them mad.
“Now,” I told him.
Brecht brought his right hand up.
Tarius sucked in a breath and held it in. Karson gripped the hem of his friend’s shirt.
The narkleer took another step.
And then Brecht brought his hand down, and his fingertips made their first delicate sounds on the tambourine.
He followed with his other hand, coaxing a rhythm from the instrument.
Bad-dum-tap-thwack. Bad-dum-tap-thwack.
The narkleer started to turn.
Bad-dum-tap-thwack. Bad-dum-tap-thwack.
The narkleer turned further, and the seconds drew out, and Karson gripped Tarius shirt tighter, and even I felt like I was holding my breath, despite having no lungs.
Come on, Brecht….
Bad-dum-tap-thwack-knock-ba-dum-tap-rap.
Looking through Brecht’s eyes, I saw something nobody else could. As he played his tune and poured his bard mana into it, musical notes made from light
drifted outwards, floating through the air, fairly-like and seeming to dance up and down with each tap of his hands.
The magical notes seeped into the narkleer’s open mouth, into the black cavern on its face, waltzing through its body.
The narkleer stopped turning as the song took hold, and it did so just in time. Though I could see the edges of its mouth, we could only see part of one of its eyes, saving my kobolds from its gaze.
Phew.
It was stuck now, paralyzed by Brecht’s spell. Though I doubted it would hold it for long.
“No time to waste,” I said. “Approach it from behind. Tarius, you’re the tallest so you’ll need to place the sack. Maginhart, position the mirrors.”
Despite the narkleer lulled into a freeze Tarius still crept as he approached it, taking each step slower than the last as if he expected its trance to break at any moment.
Meanwhile, Brecht carried on his rhythm, his fingers dancing over the pigskin stretched taught over his tambourine, every strike producing a new note. On and on his song went, the sound making it seem like the room had a heartbeat.
Tarius was within five feet from the narkleer now. He looked tiny when standing against it.
He looked back our way, the fear clear on his face.
A shape approached from Brecht’s left. The bard didn’t break concentration, but as the shape got closer I saw that it was Shadow. She took one look at the narkleer, shrugged, and settled down, scanning the room.
“There’s something I don’t like here,” she said.
“Narkleer,” answered Wylie.
“Not that, little one. Something else.”
“Traps?” I asked, projecting my core voice.
She shook her head. “Nothing physical. An aura, but it feels far away.”
I didn’t know what to make of that, and I didn’t have time to think it through.
Just then, Brecht missed a note, hitting the side of the tambourine with his finger.
“Brecht is losing mana,” I said. “Tarius?”
The kobold was behind the narkleer now, holding the grain sack in his hand. He cocked his arm back and launched the sack, hitting the narkleer on the back of the head.
“Aim better,” I said.
“Oh, aim better. Excellent advice. Why not tell someone who’s drowning to just swim harder?”
He grabbed the grain sack, held the edge, and tried again, this time landing it on top of the narkleer’s head, but not covering it.
“Again,” I said.
As Tarius jumped up and down, trying to recover the sack from the creature’s head, Brecht missed another note.
And then another.
“His mana’s fading. One more try, Tarius. If you miss, I need you all to leave before the narkleer recovers.”
Shadow sighed. “Talk about delegation and square pegs and triangular holes. Let me try.”
She took the grain sack from Tarius, closed one eye and then, squinting, launched the grain sack. It looked in the air, before arcing down and falling perfectly over the narkleer’s head, completely covering its face.
“Maginhart,” I said. “You’re up. Karson, help him.”
He and Karson carried the mirrors over to the Narkleer. At nine feet tall, the mirrors were just the right height. They positioned these in a triangular shape around the narkleer, so that no matter which way it turned, it would see a mirror.
The jelly was charcoal black now, with only a few small translucent spots left.
“We better make this even quicker,” I said. “Not to worry you, but the narkleer’s invisible rays of death are going to start affecting you soon. Brecht, take a break. It’s time for the narkleer to wake up.”
The bard, entranced in his music, drummed his tune for another cycle before my order finally penetrated his brain, and then he stopped.
Without the music, the dungeon was eerily quiet. It wasn’t lost on me what a ridiculous sight this was; we had three kobolds filled with anger dust, a jelly crammed to bursting with dark energy, and a narkleer surrounded by mirrors and with an empty grain sack on its head.
I hadn’t expected to be spending my day this way, that’s for sure.
“Now what?” asked Shadow.
“All of you but Brecht can leave. No sense taking more of a risk.”
The others looked at Brecht. “But we can’t leave him here.”
“That’s an order,” I said, putting the full weight of my authority into my core voice.
The kobolds, Shadow aside, were loyal to each other and didn’t want to leave their bard, but none could rebel when I used my commanding voice. Not because my voice was scary, or anything; because I was their creator, and our bond forbade them refusing my orders.
They filed out one by one, leaving Brecht alone with the narkleer.
“The monster is breaking from my spell,” he said.
“Just stay quiet. That’s how we want it.”
“I’m scared, Beno.”
Wow. That really got to me.
Just for a slither of a second, the words ‘I’m scared, Beno’ found a weakness in my gem core and attacked my psyche, and I felt a wrenching feeling inside.
It was gone in an instant, but it was still worrying. I hadn’t felt real sadness in years.
“Keep calm and keep quiet, and nothing will happen to you. I’ll have you out in a jiffy, long before the narkleer’s energy does any lasting harm.”
Now, the narkleer recovered its mobility and turned around. It was confused, but that was no surprise. It had just recovered from a trance, only to find itself in darkness.
I spoke through Brecht now, casting my voice through his vocal cords.
“I know you can understand me, narkleer,” I said. “Listen to me very carefully. The darkness you have woken to is an empty bag of grain we have placed over your head. All around you now are mirrors; surfaces that will show your reflection.”
The narkleer snorted.
“I am sure you know that your vision can cause madness and death. To remove the grain sack from your head now will only reveal your own reflection.”
It snorted again, louder and angrier this time.
“Good. You understand, then. You know that looking at your reflection casts your own vision upon yourself. To remove your sack now is to bring insanity upon your person.”
The narkleer turned in a circle, and then stopped moving, making horrible little grunts.
I knew I had it then. “With that established, we can talk.”
CHAPTER 7
“I see…I see. Curse your lineage! The old sack and mirror trick again, is it?”
The narkleer’s voice sounded husky, though I supposed it hadn’t used it in a long time. It wasn’t surprising to me to hear it speak my tongue; I had read about narkleers in the academy, after all. If I hadn’t known that I could bargain with it, I would never have contrived this ridiculous trap.
Even so, as much as its words didn’t surprise me, they saddened me a little.
“Old sack and mirror trick?” I said. “This isn’t your first time being caught in such a way?”
“You have a strange voice. What are you? Tell me. Tell me. A hero?”
I laughed. “Couldn’t be more wrong.”
“I see…I see…fairy?”
“Nope.”
“Faun?”
“It isn’t your day, narkleer.”
“Curse your lineage! Tell me what you are.”
“As the one without a sack on their head and not trapped between mirrors, I’ll ask the questions.”
“You will speak with respect, and I will speak in turn. As a narkleer, I deserve that as much as any stranger would.”
Ah, yes. Narkleers had a thing about respect.
“Fair enough,” I said. “We’ll talk civilly. An answer for an answer. And to give you the first; I am a dungeon core.”
“Another one, eh?”
I was about to get him to clarify this, but I realized that I would only get an ans
wer for an answer, and there was no use wasting a question. I needed to keep this as civil as I could. Despite the fact I had trapped him, for now, I needed to be hesitant in using force. I needed him to form a bond with me, and if I behaved like an ass he might very well choose to destroy himself rather than join me.
I had to be careful with my questions.
First, I spoke to Brecht using my core voice.
“Go and join the others,” I said. “This is going to take longer than I expected. I’ll use the jelly for my core vision. No sense you becoming sick.”
“Thank you.”
“No, thank you, Brecht. You did great today.”
The kobold smiled at my praise and then left. My core vision stayed with him for just a moment, before I switched to the jelly.
Now, looking through the eyes of the floating blob, I saw a different view of the room. There was a kind of ripple effect on my vision, making it difficult to focus on the narkleer.
Now, what should I ask? There were so many things I was desperate to know.
Who used to be the narkleer’s master?
What happened to them?
What was the narkleer guarding?
I decided that one question overruled all of the others because a negative answer made it moot.
“What factors, both external and your own, would prevent you from joining my dungeon and serving underneath me, were I to free you from your predicament?”
The narkleer shuffled toward the new sound of my voice.
“Interesting question, core…interesting…interesting…”
The way he said the word interesting and with the tone of voice he used, suggested this was anything but interesting to him.
“I suppose that one factor may be, to answer delicately…that I…oh, forget it! A curse on your lineage!”
He was rattled, that was for sure.
“An answer for an answer,” I said. “I’m waiting.”
“Curse you and your family line, core. Hex your descendants. Plague your ancestors.”
“Making threats to a bunch of dead guys won’t get you out of this, and if you don’t speak to me with the same respect that you requested for yourself, then you might have to take a look in the mirror.”
“A hex on…” began the narkleer, before letting his voice trail off. “Why should I want to bond with your dungeon, core?”
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