by Max Anthony
“I look forward to arguing with you at length about the subject when we escape from here and are drunk in a tavern. Anyway, are you going to pull that lever, or am I?”
Escaping from the slugs had brought them into another square room, forty feet to a side. They’d both begun to wonder if shapes other than the square had been known when these caverns were shaped. Neither of them could recall seeing anything circular, except for a few holes and pipes filled with waste. There was nothing decorative, that was for sure. Even the writings they’d seen way back in the temple rooms were variations of a square shape.
This particular square room was featureless apart from a single additional metal door and a short, metal lever, which protruded from one wall. It had a slot down which it could run, but gave no clues as to its purpose.
Viddo examined the lever. There was something satisfying about pulling a lever and he generally found it hard to resist. The problem was, he’d been keeping tabs on his lever pulling ever since he’d been a young thief and the statistics didn’t lie: slightly more than eighty percent of levers triggered something unpleasant. Almost all of the rest merely did something mundane. But, when it was a good one, it was sure to be excellent. The people who built these places must have realised that adventurers were suckers for the unknown, which is why they put levers everywhere. It was because they knew they’d get a few easy kills from those unable to resist temptation.
Viddo was no blundering, flat-footed dungeoneer. He soon determined that there was no trapdoor beneath the lever. He looked into the slot and then prodded his dagger carefully inside, but found no unexpected wires. Calling upon his years of expertise, all he could conclude was that it was a well-constructed lever, and probably a trap.
“How come you knew exactly what that trip wire was going to do back when we were leaving the temple area?” enquired Rasmus, eager to learn.
“Trip wires are simple things,” said Viddo. They usually trigger something mundane, and I am better trained in locating mundane traps. Whatever is behind this lever will be magical. When I pull it, it’ll trigger a magical effect. If there were gears and cogs behind this wall, I’d know exactly what was going to happen.”
“I see,” said Rasmus. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Viddo was winging it, but he’d seen the man’s skill with countless traps before, so was forced to give him the benefit of the doubt. “We’d better think quickly, though. If you look, that door we came through is starting to melt.”
“I’d have never thought slugs could be so tenacious,” Viddo replied, looking at the slowly dissolving door. “They must have been happy in that room with all of that shit for years. Then we come by and they can’t get out of there quickly enough. Right, let’s get this lever pulled.”
With that, Viddo grabbed the metal bar and yanked it downwards. It moved with a sinister grating sound and then slowly slid upwards until it had returned to its starting position. He didn’t know it immediately, but his figure of eighty percent had just climbed fractionally higher.
“Oh, just great,” he complained. “I hate the ones that do that. You never know if it’s because you’ve not pulled a different lever elsewhere first, or if you haven’t got one foot on a pressure point over the other side of the room or any one of a number of other tedious prerequisites.”
“We should probably have checked out the exit door before pulling the lever,” said Rasmus sagely.
“I’m sure you’re right,” said Viddo. He hadn’t yet noticed that a ten feet section of the opposite wall had vanished. Then, he followed the wizard’s gaze and saw them. Behind the now-missing wall were two massive skeletons. They looked like hunched men, with long arms and short legs. They were broad across the shoulders, with shreds of skin still stuck in places. Their eye sockets were empty and black. They had an air of evil about them, where the other skeletons had not. Had they not been nine feet tall and wielding huge, notched axes, Rasmus and Viddo might have sauntered across and dispatched them. The creatures were unmoving for now, but wizard and thief were aware of the inevitable.
“You’d better distract them, while I check that door,” said Viddo.
As soon as Viddo moved, the skeletons moved as well. Their heads turned in unison, fixing on the thief. It was as though they had purposely remained still until just the right time, in order to increase the shock at their sudden movement.
“Distract them, I said” he hissed at Rasmus.
“Give me a chance!” spluttered the wizard, already having convinced himself that he personally would not have pulled the lever.
The wizard cast his shock spell. The sparks jumped from his hands, across the room and then skittered between the two skeletons. They displayed a slight charring, but Rasmus hadn’t expected his fairly weak spell to do them any serious harm. However, their heads now looked at him instead. Viddo sidled his way slowly along the wall, doing his best to merge with the gloom at the extremes of the wizard’s spell of light.
Now that the skeletons’ attention was away from Viddo, the wizard knew that he should no longer attempt to speak with the thief, lest he give away his position. He thought quickly. Though his arsenal was depleted, he had numerous spells available to use, none of which were great against bigger undead. A fireball might slow them, but he didn’t want Viddo to be caught in the blast. He had three or four proper arch-wizard beauties available to him, but he wanted to keep those in the bag for later. That was the trouble with the really good spells – they took so long to memorise that most wizards were reluctant to fire them off at will. Rasmus wasn’t averse to a little bit of wanton destruction, but he always felt defenceless when he’d run out of the good stuff. That was especially true now, when he had no way of knowing when he’d be able to get back to his spell book.
He was permitted little time for rumination. The skeletons each took a step forward, with their axes raised in anticipation. Then, rather than advancing slowly whilst making clumsy swings of their weapons, they broke into a sprint, coming directly across the room towards him. Rasmus had not been expecting this, for even the most powerful undead tended not to run. After standing with his mouth agape for only the tiniest of moments, Rasmus also broke into a sprint, heading away from the skeletons as quickly as he was able. He could already see that the walls of the room were going to make this a tricky affair, and he managed to get himself hemmed into one quarter of the room almost immediately.
The nearest skeleton swung its axe. The weapon looked like it weighed as much as a fully-grown man, but the arms propelling it were possessed of a hideous strength. The jagged blade scythed downwards and Rasmus tried to lean to one side, in the same way that he’d seen Viddo do on many occasions. What the wizard hadn’t realised was that it took many years of practise and experience to pull off such a manoeuvre and to make it look so easy. Rasmus could make a few lusty swings with a blunt weapon, but he wasn’t much good at dodging. He felt certain that he was going to be too slow, but found to his great surprise that he somehow managed to twist away from the falling axe. It swung past, missing him by a whisker. The second skeleton also had a try and Rasmus astounded himself by ducking beneath the blade.
With that, he was off. He darted through a gap between their legs and sprinted towards the other side of the room, finding his footsteps much lighter and more rapid than he remembered them to be. Boots of speed! a voice suggested to him. The undead wheeled around and pursued him. He’d thought that bony feet wouldn’t get much purchase on a stone floor, but these giants didn’t seem to be especially bothered as they came at him for another go. They could run almost as fast as he could, and in the confines of the room, Rasmus worried that it would be more than enough for them to intercept him every time.
To add to his woes, he noticed that the metal door had now melted almost completely, and a pile of slugs had started to ooze inside. Viddo was hard at work on their escape door, and Rasmus saw his friend as a faint blur, crouched next to the lock.
Another swinging axe came his
way, but Rasmus didn’t stick around to see it. Like a hare, he ducked left, ducked right and then jumped once more between them, crouching beneath a backhanded strike from a metal axe handle. This isn’t too hard at all he congratulated himself, before remembering the ring he’d found in the vampire’s lair. Bah – this ring is guiding my evasion, he thought, crashing down to earth, with his new-found expertise proven to be magical rather than innate.
Although the ring had saved him so far, he knew that it would only be a matter of time before one of the skeletons landed a blow on him. Magical items were a help, but they couldn’t turn a bumbling clod into a master swordsman. It seemed like a better plan to simply keep as much distance between himself and his attackers, but they were a little too fast and the slugs spilling through the doorway were a complication he didn’t need. After another circuit of the room, he had started to become desperate and was considering unleashing a few of his rarer spells. Each time he ran, the skeletons got a little bit closer as if they’d learned what he was up to. Even his boots-powered fleet-footedness wasn’t going to be enough. If only I was even faster, he said to himself sourly.
All at once, he was faster. Much, much faster. The boots became a blur as they drummed away around the room’s perimeter, taking Rasmus by surprise as his upper body tried to catch up with his flashing feet. He left the skeletons in his wake as they turned around and around, trying to determine how best to catch him. They were evidently much less shocked than Rasmus at this turn of events, though they were now much less capable of catching up to him. Near the entrance door, the wizard, already become cocky, decided to try a new trick and leaped over the pile of slugs in order to save himself from having to run around them. He cleared them with ease, jumping so far that he almost brained himself on the ceiling and had to put his hands in front of him to reduce the severity of an impact with a wall. The collision was not serious and he set off once more, telling himself what splendid fun this all was.
After two more laps, during which Rasmus taunted the skeletons by pointing at his backside, the wizard saw the outline of Viddo stand up and swing open their exit. Without awaiting an invitation, Rasmus shot through the opening at such velocity that it created a gentle breeze in his wake, the two skeletons following as quickly as they were able. The wizard’s joy was curtailed when he found that he’d entered a place he hadn’t expected. There was no opportunity for him to admire his new surroundings, since there was a thirty-feet wide chasm in front of his path, with no time to slow down. With his heart in his mouth, Rasmus launched himself at the gap, just as the temporary speed boost from his boots expired.
Back in the room the wizard had fled, Viddo waited until the skeletons had run through the doorway and then looked out after them. He was just in time to see a wizard at the height of his arc over a wide sundering in the rock. To Viddo’s relief, Rasmus landed successfully on the other side, though he did end up in a tumbling, ungraceful heap. The two giant skeletons, intent on their prey, were unable to slow down in time and they both ran clean off the edge, vanishing without a sound into whatever lay below.
“Excellent!” proclaimed Viddo as he took himself through the exit, pulling it gently closed behind him.
Viddo looked around him, wondering anew at this place. He’d entered the ruined remains of what had once been a room. Where he stood was the same featureless grey-stone squareness of the floor. Near where the middle would have been, the floor dropped away, leaving a ragged, crumbling lip. Something had happened here, perhaps recently or perhaps a thousand years past. Viddo could only guess at what shift in the earth might have caused it, but there was a split in the rock, running directly across his path. Upwards, it seemed to go on forever. He looked left and right and saw that it could conceivably run for many miles in both directions. The series of rooms they’d been exploring were visible to the left, but broken away, with the traps and creatures they’d contained collapsed into the chasm below. To the right, the fissure curved one way and the other, limiting Viddo’s view of what lay in that direction. Across from him was a wizard - a familiar-looking wizard of his acquaintance. This wizard was standing on a wide, flat area, waving his hands frantically. His mouth was forming shapes.
“Did you see how fast I ran?” he shouted. “These boots are outstanding!”
“They’ll only work once a day!” called Viddo, wondering to himself if he’d misremembered and that it was only once a week. “So don’t get yourself into any more trouble for a while and expect them to get you out of it!”
“Are you coming over? Look, there’s another way out, with no sign of slugs!”
In the vast expanse of this space, their voices sounded small and insignificant, but Viddo thought it for the best if they kept their conversation to a minimum, in case something was watching them from a place unseen. He gave an exaggerated nod of his head, to be sure that Rasmus would not miss the gesture, and then put a finger over his lips to indicate silence. The wizard replied with an equally exaggerated nod.
For all his confidence, Viddo didn’t much fancy the jump. He didn’t have the run up he’d have liked and thirty feet would have been a bit of a stretch even with a strong following wind. Even so, he was fearless with heights and almost fearless with danger. He pushed himself away from the wall of the fractured room and hurtled towards the edge, running faster than Rasmus could recall seeing him run before. The wizard watched as his friend launched from the precipice, maintaining a perfect pose as he soared through the air. After two or three seconds, Viddo landed perfectly, took three or four paces to slow himself to a halt and then turned to the wizard.
“Let’s go.”
“Smart arse,” muttered Rasmus. “I didn’t know you could run so fast. As quick as my boots that was.”
“We thieves have our tricks as well,” said Viddo. “I can’t do that one too often, so I keep it in reserve in case it’s ever really needed.”
“I wonder if this fissure completely splits this underground world into two parts,” said Rasmus, changing the subject.
“It looks like it stretches far to either side, but I can’t be sure. It might end quite soon along that way where it turns and bends. It seems to go down forever, doesn’t it?”
“I think my preference for the moment is to go upwards. If not forever, then at least until we reach the surface. I’m hungry, thirsty and getting tired once more.”
“The passage of time is a difficult thing to measure when you have no means to judge it. Imagine living your entire life without the sun to tell you when it’s time to do something!” Viddo said.
“I suppose you’d just eat when you felt hungry and sleep when you felt tired.”
“Before getting up in the same pitch darkness and fetching your pickaxe for another monotonous day of chipping away at a new section of grey stone tunnel that you’ve been told to excavate.”
“Let’s be on our way,” said Rasmus. “I feel a bit exposed standing here where it’s open. I think I’ve become used to corridors and passages.”
There was one such corridor leading away from them, but before the wizard could turn towards it, he felt Viddo’s hand on his arm.
“Look!” hissed the thief.
Rasmus’ eyes followed a pointing finger. “I can’t see anything. What is it?”
“Up on the ledge over the other side, fifty feet above and forty feet over. Another dread knight.”
“I can’t see in the dark like you. What’s it doing?”
“It’s just staring at us, not doing very much at all.”
“That answers the question about whether or not they’re following us.”
Viddo tried to look surreptitious as his hand crept down his side towards the crossbow at his belt. Then, in a burst of movement, he pulled it free while his other hand reached for one of the bolts. In one impossibly smooth action, he loaded a bolt, pulled back a lever to cock the trigger, raised the bow and fired. The bolt disappeared, moving too fast for even Viddo’s eyes to follow. He knew he
’d been successful when he saw a silver speck appear on the black of the dread knight’s breastplate. It dropped to one knee and Viddo thought he’d destroyed it. His crossbow and the ammunition with it were imbued with powerful enchantments, but the dread knight was not a minor foe. After a few seconds, it pushed itself to its feet, just as another bolt ricocheted off its helmet.
“Bugger it, that one glanced away!” said Viddo, reaching for a third bolt.
He was too late. The creature did not turn around, but it stepped back into the gloom until the thief could no longer see it.
“It’s still there,” he said. “I wonder if it is able to communicate our position to its master.”
“That’s a worrying thought,” said Rasmus. “We should get away from here quickly. I would far rather we came upon the lich in our own time and on our own terms, instead of having it appear next to us while we’re otherwise distracted.”
Without further ado, they took the exit from this broken room. Viddo chanced a look behind and fancied he saw two red eyes watching him from a distance.
Seventeen
They had feared that the area on the other side of the chasm would be more of the same trapped rooms, with their age-damaged metal doors. It was not, suggesting to them that the rest of those rooms had lain in another direction. Although they’d chanced upon some good quality items, they felt that their resources were running too low to spend time battling against the wits of whoever had designed the place. Low-level dungeon stuff usually needed a fully-prepared party of adventurers with food and a plethora of powerful magical items. It just so happened that they’d swooped into the middle of that particular area and made off with a chest of loot.
The corridor they were in now bore a striking resemblance to almost every other corridor they’d travelled up until now. It was wide enough to travel side-by-side and the floor was even enough that they didn’t have to spend time worrying about falling over. Rasmus carried a certain odour about him, redolent as he was with the reeking ordure from the slug room. It was on his hands and smeared over his robes. The only clean part of him was his boots, which appeared to have some sort of self-polishing enchantment added as an afterthought. The wizard was dismayed by his predicament, since he was fastidious and scrupulously clean by nature. Viddo found it strange to think that a man so driven to adventure would worry about his cleanliness, given the difficulty in finding baths when you were a hundred miles from anywhere. He didn’t bother himself to worry about it - that was Rasmus’ burden to bear.
