Dungeon Masters

by Mike Wild

  “Ralph,” Trix whispered, “what are you doing?”

  “Getting them off our backs,” he said through clenched teeth. “Hopefully.”

  “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Nope. But preferable to being riddled with bullets in the next few minutes, wouldn’t you say?”

  They watched as Combo’s people scooped up handfuls of coins and stumbled back down to show them to the man himself. Combo at least had the presence of mind to notice what they, in their greed, hadn’t—his face looking back at him.

  “What is this?”

  “Funny money?” Trix offered. “But still gold, Combo. Still gold.”

  Now Combo headed for the chest, which was exactly what they wanted. What they didn’t want was him turning when he was halfway up to order his other people to shoot them.

  “Wait!” Trix cried, buying time. As it happened, it was a question she wanted answered anyway. “Why, Combo—why is Garrison so determined to stop us?”

  Combo smiled as he reached the chest and began lining his pockets, but somehow it wasn’t Combo’s smile. “That,” he said, “would be telling.”

  There they were again, Trix thought. Those same four words. Her mysterious visitor’s words. Garrison’s words. And now his lackey’s words. It was as if they were all one mind. The same mind she had also very nearly joined. The chill she felt on hearing them was almost as disturbing as what happened next. Because finally emptied of a sufficient amount of the enchanted, faux gold, the chest rose from the bones, shoved upwards by a counterweight hidden beneath. And Trix, Ralph, and Yuri knew suddenly where the gas on the level had been coming from. It was being secreted by mudpuddins.

  They came from vents that slammed open in the chamber walls; they came from vents near the floor; they could be heard slithering towards their prey along the corridor outside, all reeking of the gas, a visible miasma that surrounded them. It was part of their makeup—a predatory tool. Keepers called them mudpuddins, but really what they were were carnivorous lumps of slime. Those from the floor vents oozed out like snot from noses, while those from the wall vents slid and fell to the floor with a quivering plop, their internal organs—what little there were of them—realigning with no need to turn the right way up. All the slimes shared these organs—brain and stem, beating heart, a twisting spiral of alimentary canal—all fully visible through the translucent mounds that passed for their bodies. These were the length of a tall man and perhaps a third as tall in repose, but when moving they stretched to half that length again. All were identical other than for colour. Mostly green here, but there were reds and yellows, too. Trix had never been sure which of the three she considered most dangerous, the greens for their acidic spit, reds for their combustive effect, or yellows for the sulphuric clouds they belched. Any one of these charming traits could bring a man down, and once a man was down, that was it. The slimes were blind, deaf, mute things, but they could sense movement, and when they did, they were on you in a second, absorbing you like some dungeon antibody, which, as far as anyone knew, they well could be. They were certainly thorough—following digestion, there was nothing left, apart from perhaps a couple of teeth in a slime trail on the floor. There again was where the colours differed: the greens offed you almost instantly, reds took an hour or two, but the yellows took their time about it—a long time. Cases in point—a green that had dropped from the wall dissolving one of Combo’s people after the briefest of cries, a red already stripping clothes and skin from another, while a yellow from the corridor was moving off with a thrashing, silently-screaming-for-help master teamer inside its gelatinous form. Even had Trix a desire to set her potential executioner free, she wouldn’t have been able—her staffs and crossbows were useless against these things.

  But magic wasn’t.

  Not that magic would do that poor sod any good, and Ralph knew it. Instead, he took full advantage of Combo and his people’s disorientation—mudpuddin gas having caught them unmasked—to bring down two lightning strikes to buy them passage out of the chamber. As mudpuddins shrivelled, they ran. Ran into a corridor filling with the bastards from either end. Ralph hurled some more fire, giving them some room to manoeuvre, but this left him exhausted, and it was left to Yuri to clear their path. Trix and Ralph dodged and bounded as Yuri spun, his sword sweeping in great arcs, slicing off chunks of slime that splashed against the walls like jelly in a food fight. But the Russian was in full control, knowing exactly where to strike most effectively, surgically, to give his companions and himself space to flee. This they did, ignoring the screams behind them, once more following Shen’s hastily barked directions to one of the level’s exits. But at seemingly every junction, every turn, more slimes were appearing from vents and soon would be too plentiful to avoid. If that wasn’t bad enough, Combo and a couple of his people who’d survived could be heard starting pursuit.

  Only by risking passage through a vent did they manage to put some space between themselves and their predators, finally reaching the point where Shen’s readings told him there was an exit. Except it wasn’t an exit. Not quite. Some way ahead they could see an iron gate beyond which darkness hinted at descent, but between it and their position was first another iron gate and then a chamber much like that in which they’d found the ‘dragon’. This new bottleneck had the same ledges on either side, but in this case the chamber they overlooked was completely empty. Something felt weird about it. It was almost as if the space itself was presenting as an obstacle. They would need to tread warily.

  Yuri looked for and found a lever to open the first of the two gates. It was locked in the down position, semi-rusted, overgrown and tangled with vines, but he prised it free using his sword as a fulcrum. It clanked upwards, and the iron gate rose with a rain of sparks from its runners. The three of them paused before entering, checking whether this chamber had a pressure plate to match the other, and sure enough, there it was, though what it triggered was unknown. They leapt over the plate and continued in, heading for the far gate, Trix’s crossbow targeting first the left ledge, then right. She expected trouble to launch itself from above at any moment.

  She was looking in the wrong place.

  “That’s far enough, Keeper 7,” said a voice from behind. Trix sighed and turned to see Combo and two lackeys standing in the gateway. They looked as if they’d had a run-in or two with the slimes—nasty acid and sulphur burns on their arms and legs—and all three were distinctly twitchy, under the effects of the gas. When, therefore, Combo asked that she, Yuri and Ralph drop all weapons and backpacks, it was deemed best to comply. “Now back away,” Combo said.

  He stepped forward; it was too late for them to do anything other than cry “No, don’t!” The plate clanked beneath Combo’s tread. The clank seemed to echo in the walls, though Trix suspected it was no echo but additional mechanisms at work. Their overall purpose remained to be seen, but their first effect was that the gate behind Combo slammed shut, shutting his men outside. He spun—far too jumpy—found no lever, and ordered his men to use the one Yuri had freed. They’d have obeyed had, at that moment, slimes not appeared in the corridor, trapping them with nowhere to go. The pair emptied every clip they had as the slimes came for them, but their bullets merely lodged inside, like sixpences in puddings. Then, screaming, they too were sucked within.

  Combo was sent sprawling to the floor as Trix’s staff whacked the side of his head. He tried to rise, aim his weapon, but Trix brought the staff up hard into his balls, dropping him back to his knees. A third swipe sent the weapon clattering across the floor.

  “You fucking moron!” she shouted. “Do you realise what you’ve done?”

  Combo wiped blood from his mouth, stood. It was clear he didn’t give a toss about his lost people. “What’s the problem, Hunter?” he said, looking around the chamber. “There’s nothing in here.”

  “You think?” Trix answered. “You think?” Because when she’d heard his gun clatter across the floor, it had sounded compl
etely wrong. Not wrong in the fact the floor was metal—she’d felt that under her boots—but that it was hollow metal. She looked down and saw what they’d all missed—the floor was a latticework of iron, a series of grids. And beneath the grids, countless dormant slimes. But they didn’t remain dormant for long. The clanks in the background had released something—some kind of revitalising fluid—that babbled between them, rose around them, and suddenly the slimes were rising with it. They reached the grids, began to seep through them, and though Ralph and Yuri raced for the far exit to open the gate, they found it was leverless, too. They were in a trap, a perfect trap.

  Combo lost it. No surprise, there. Thank god he no longer had his assault rifle or they’d all be dead. Instead, he snatched out his melee weapons—razor-sharp blades, deadly elsewhere but useless here—and began to slash indiscriminately. Trix, Ralph, and Yuri, meanwhile, headed for the hills. Or, at least, the ledges. They were difficult to reach—Yuri rammed his sword into the stone to give each of them a foothold—but they managed to pull themselves up. Combo tried to follow them, but Yuri hung from the ledge and snatched away the sword. He did, however, grab Combo’s wrist.

  “Tell us, tovarish, why it is so important that you want my English dead? The professor and I, we are unimportant, but there must be a reason, yes?”

  “That would be telling.”

  Yuri punched him in the face. He almost fell. Combo looked down at the slimes slapping against the wall like waves on a quayside but smiled a bloody smile. Yuri punched him again but retained his grip. Combo knew what deal was on the table.

  “All right, all right! She knows things. Things he doesn’t want her to know.”

  “Who, and what things?” Trix said, leaping forward. “What fucking things? Because I’m damned if I know.”

  Combo’s expression changed. Changed because the slimes had reached him. It would have been funny, because it was almost like a party trick—a party trick where someone pulled down someone’s pants, except it wasn’t just the pants but everything inside. All that was left beneath Combo’s waist was bones. He screamed, screamed very loudly, and Yuri let what remained of him go.

  More slimes oozed through the grids, buoying up those above. Their level began to rise. It was at this point that Trix realised should anyone ever wish to chronicle her adventures, there was unlikely to be a sequel.

  “We have to get that gate open. There has to be a way.”

  “Like this lever?” Ralph said.

  There was a lever, too. Hidden behind some undergrowth at the far end of the ledge. Old and long unused, like much this place. It once again took Yuri’s raw strength to free it. But when pulled, nothing happened.

  “Or possibly that lever,” Ralph added. He pointed across the chamber, over the slimes, to the other ledge, where another lever sat, just waiting to be pulled. Sadly, ‘levitate’ wasn’t amongst Ralph’s repertoire of spells. Instead, Trix gauged the distance between ledges and pulled her recovered crossbow from her shoulder. She attached a grapple, aimed, and fired. The barb shot across the gap, trailing a rope behind it, and impacted with the far wall. She tossed her end to Yuri, who tied it off, and then tested its tension—with the dungeon walls in the state they were in, would it hold?

  She guessed it would have to.

  Trix knelt to grab hold of the rope and slipped off the edge of the ledge. The rope bowed and creaked under her weight, and she froze as the slimes sensed her presence and surged upwards. Stretched almost to the point of separation, like dividing cells, the reds and yellows and greens were like the peaks and troughs of a roiling, colouring-book sea; a tableau that would have been striking, even pretty, were it not utterly deadly. Trix swung her legs and wrapped them around the rope to shimmy along, finding at the lowest point that there was perhaps an arm’s length between her back and the highest of the slimes, a gap that was closing all the time. Spit splashed her clothes, burning through to the skin, and a sulphur cloud taxed her breather to the breaking point. Trix winced, hacked, and choked but could move no faster for risk of the rope releasing. Her crossing was an agonised eternity, and when she finally reached the opposite ledge, she collapsed on her side, almost going foetal with pain. She fumbled for a health potion, gulped it down, and sighed as a flood of relief cooled tortured nerves.

  Trix picked herself up and headed for the second lever. It was far more rusted and worn than the first, and as it refused to move beneath her grip, she wondered if it wouldn’t have been wiser to send Yuri—but then, with Yuri’s weight, she doubted he’d have made it across. So, she began to push and heave. Three minutes later she resorted to booting the thing. It finally gave. But again, nothing happened. Not a damned thing. She yanked the now-loose lever again. And again. Zilch. Trix turned, frowning when she saw the level of the slimes was now almost equal with their own, and only then noticed that there were three other levers, one behind each of the pillars that fronted the ledge. Oh, so that was the game, was it? Multiple levers, no doubt needing to be pulled in a specific order. Bastards.

  So—what was it to be? Middle lever in, outside levers out? Nope. Left, left, right? Nope. All in? No, but now there seemed to be some resistance in the left-hand one, as if some underfloor gear was engaged. Tentatively, she pulled on its opposite number, feeling for the same resistance, but felt none. The next in the sequence had, then, to be either the middle or the very first. Maybe. She opted for the latter, felt what she wanted to feel, yanked it into place, and returned to the middle lever. Its resistance was now pronounced, and Trix pulled it all the way, ready to hear the welcome sound of something—anything—happening.

  Except possibly that of all four levers snapping back into the positions from which they’d started.

  What the fuck?

  Trix started again. And again. And again. Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk. Finally, she’d had enough and furiously marched along the levers, flinging them back and forth and shouting so loudly in frustration that she barely heard Yuri, who was shouting to her from the opposite ledge.

  “The Professor wishes to know when we should pull our lever, English!”

  “What?”

  “He has seen you running back and forth like the blue-bummed flea and says this is clearly a reciprocal arrangement. Our lever must be pulled when your levers are in position. He added, ‘I’d wager the stupid girl has not realised that.’”

  Trix paused. Fuck.

  “Of course I realised that!” she shouted back. “I was just making sure we had the right combination!” She broke off to yank the levers back into the positions where their resistance had been greatest. “Okay, I think that’s it! Try it now!”

  Yuri coughed, nodded to Ralph. The old man shook his head, smiled, and pulled his lever. All eyes turned towards the gate, but it did not open. This time, though, there was a sense of imminence that had not been there before, a feeling that perhaps it was going to open, just not quite yet. Instead, a clanking from below signified the levers had activated something else, and after a few seconds they heard the sound of the grids beneath the slimes dropping away. Their level dropped as a consequence, leaving a gelatinous tidemark on the chamber walls, and a minute later they had all been returned to the underfloor sluice from which they’d emerged.

  The grids slammed back into place. The far gate opened.

  Trix, Yuri, and Ralph jumped down from their ledges, boots clanging on the metal. Rather than looking pleased at their liberation from the chamber, Ralph seemed perturbed and puzzled.

  “Ralph?”

  “The more we discover about this place,” he said, “the more I feel a purpose in its making. This is far from a random ruin.”

  “Ideas?”

  “Not as yet. But I have a feeling we will come across answers soon.”

  Yuri ignored the exchange, his attention on other things. Specifically, that when they’d retrieved their weapons and subsequently run for the ledges, they hadn’t taken their backpacks. All three were now washed up in the far corner of
the chamber. Yuri picked up the sodden items one by one. The corrosive excretions of the slimes had destroyed everything inside.

  Their supplies—including all their food—were gone.

  XII

  Turn-Based Combat

  The lack of food began to bite the next morning. Which was more than they did. Their canteens still held plentiful water, but so far as solids went, they were all but out. Trix found a Twix in a pocket, Yuri, an apple, and Ralph a half-eaten crisp butty in the lining of his robe that he seemed to remember starting the last time he’d been down in the dungeon, a year before.

  Foraging for breakfast became a priority. No easy task on the level they’d reached. A labyrinth of corridors and cells, it differed from those above in that swathes of it had been blitzed, reducing it to a half maze of exploded rubble and smoke-blackened walls, with occasional intact areas stretching as far as they could see. Trix, Yuri, and Ralph frowned. They knew a war zone when they saw one. The question was, whose war? And where were the warriors?

  Dead. Or at least those they found were dead. Long since, too. Ratlings and kobolds, from what was left of them, they’d fallen battling each other, tight clusters suggestive of intense melee; par for the course for these territorial runts. Trix rummaged through their bones—the theory, one never knew what items one might find—but, as always with these guys, all they carried was crap: an arrow, a few coppers, and a lump of cheese or two. The cheese was green and so hard they could have bludgeoned each other with it.

  Then they found other bodies. Bigger bodies. Orcs. Bloated, fly-picked forms flat on their backs, their chests—hell, their everything—pierced by so many arrows they looked like pin cushions. A few clutched a ratling or kobold to their chest, like a teddy bear, but there was nothing comforting about this—the heads of the smaller creatures were crushed in their dead hands, the insides of their brain pans forcibly ejected long ago. Others had clearly been batted aside by orc weapons or fists, little more than faded stains, now, on nearby walls. The orcs had clearly been the common enemy of the ratlings and kobolds, but somewhere down the line that allegiance seemed to have collapsed and they had turned on each other. This level, it seemed, was about a battle for survival.