Dungeon Masters

by Mike Wild

The three looked at each other, swallowed. But knew they had no choice. Yuri and Trix began to dismantle the barricade piece by piece—stones that must have taken three or four goblins to place there removed with relative ease. Still, it took them a good hour before they were through. If ‘through’ was the word. For what lay beyond the barricade wasn’t a stairwell, or a passage; it wasn’t even a room. Instead, they stared into a wooden compartment just about big enough for the three of them to stand in side by side. Trix frowned.

  “What the hell is this—a closet? They’re afraid of a closet?”

  “Maybe,” Yuri suggested, “it is where they keep their skeletons.”

  Ralph coughed and tapped them on the shoulder. “Which is exactly what we are going to be if we do not get out of here.”

  Trix and Yuri turned. The goblins they’d tied had been freed. Freed by more of their kind. But it wasn’t only their kind surrounding them. More orcs, kobolds, even a ratman or two, maybe thirty all told, positioned in a semicircle, each lurching warily, jabbing the tips of their spears towards the trio. Every one of them was emaciated, staring hungrily, united by the prospect of three new and exotic courses on the menu. The ratmen actually licked their lips.

  “I suggest,” the old man said, “that we back up.”

  They backed up.

  Backed up into the closet.

  Backed up until there was nowhere to go.

  XIII

  Descent

  Nowhere to go except down, that was. The ‘down’ to which the goblins had so desperately blocked access. It took a moment to realise they were standing in an elevator; this became apparent only because one of the wooden slats making up its floor snapped under Yuri’s weight. His foot plunged into blackness—the fetid, whistling blackness of a deep, dark shaft—and as he grabbed for support, he found a lever attached to a bent and rusted iron frame. He froze, looked at the others. They all in turn looked at the potential diners. Ringing the exit, hemming them in, none had moved any closer. From their eyes, their grunts, their body language, they were as terrified of this shaft as the heart puker had been. Trix, Yuri, and Ralph wondered what lay in the blackness below, knew that really they had no choice but to find out. To stay meant the knives—and, erm, forks—would be out, so for the moment it looked as if pushing the lever was the only way to go.

  Trix nodded to Yuri. There was a clank as he released it; the elevator cage juddered, moved. But descended only a small way before he slammed the lever back. The cage had creaked and groaned, joints strained and at least one bolt popped, and another slat had snapped in the floor. The thing was rotten through and through.

  “It’ll never hold,” Ralph said, gripping the cage’s sides. “Take us back up.”

  Yuri shoved the lever, and there was another clank. This time a hollow one. Whatever gear it was meant to engage was not engaged. He tried again. Clank. Nothing. They’d have exited there and then, but they’d descended just too far and now faced a rough rock wall. The cage shifted, lurched. Trix and Yuri joined Ralph in holding on. They exchanged worried glances.

  “We could,” suggested Yuri, “break through the roof, climb back up.”

  “Ill advised,” Ralph said, examining the upper slats. Through them, he could make out a length of rope as thick as a circus strongman’s arm, rising up to an old drop-wheel. The rope was worn in spots and partly untwined, and where it met the cage it seemed to have been jerry-rigged, looping not only through an eroding iron ring but through the slats themselves. “I believe that’s the only thing keeping us aloft.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “What can we do? We go down.”

  Yuri again reached for the lever. Trix momentarily stayed his hand.

  “Gently, Dragomiloff. Very, very gently.”

  Yuri went easy on the lever, but the cage lurched anyway. As did its occupants, clinging to its sides even more tightly. They’d all the same thought on their minds—they were in a box held by a string, plumbing a shaft of unknown, possibly bottomless depth, as potentially fucked as their surroundings.

  The cage bumped and ground down, its semi-buckled frame snagging on the rough shaft walls that would have been cleared with inches to spare, had the cage been in better shape. But in the shape it was, it strained against every small outcrop, and each strain brought with it a loss in integrity. Trix peered through the floor, instructing Yuri and Ralph to move around the cage in order to tip it left or right to avoid more prominent projections, but even so, there were some they couldn’t avoid—at one point they looked on helplessly as a snag to the cage’s side slowly tore away all its slats, and at another caught and jammed so badly the cage began to list. Had they let the list continue, they’d have been tipped, or, worse, torn apart, and Yuri had no choice but to add to the cage’s disintegration by booting away stray slats. Other problems arose—an occasional glimmer of torchlight in the walls signalled openings onto other levels, and though these could be seen but not accessed, being blocked by iron bars, the openings meant the elevator’s passengers also could be seen. As they passed the fifth such opening, they caught the attention of something they shouldn’t. It—Trix caught only a brief glimpse but, from its bony folds, reckoned it was a juggernoid—came pounding at the bars as they passed. The bars didn’t break under its first impact, but it tried twice more, and they were some thirty yards lower when both bars and frame broke loose and a rectangle of heavy metal turned end over end to scythe into the top of the cage. The clang as it hit was deafening, almost drowning out their cries of alarm as the shockwave whiplashed up the rope, causing the wheel to lose traction, its brakeshoes to smoke then release, and the cage to plummet thirty feet.

  Miraculously, when it jolted to a stop, the cage was still on the rope, although so many twines had snapped it was now half the thickness it had been. From the cage floor a gasping Trix, Yuri, and Ralph stared up, praying the juggernoid wouldn’t follow the bars. It didn’t—it roared from the now-distant rectangle of light and pounded away. Yuri picked himself up very gently and eased the frame and bars from the cage roof, down its side and into freefall in the shaft, where they sparked and clanged into the distant depths. He’d have collapsed with relief would the movement not very likely have finished them off.

  Down they went. Through how many levels they couldn’t tell. Trix tried to reach Shen through the wormglass, but it remained dark; it seemed they’d lost him. When the cage bashed into a shape where outcrops were no longer a problem, she, like Yuri and Ralph, opted to settle down and ‘enjoy’ the ride. Across from her, Ralph absorbed himself in study of the grimoire, while Yuri hummed something Russian and folksy. That, combined with the cyclical scraping sound of their descent was somewhat soporific, actually, like the sway of a slow, cross-country train.

  Then things started to get warm.

  Trix shifted onto her knees and stared down through the slats once more. There was light below. A blood-orange light. A perfect square of it. From this the heat came. The end, it seemed, of the shaft. And something Trix did not like the look of at all.

  “Er, guys …? What does this look like to you?”

  Yuri and Ralph joined her in kneeling. The light seemed to ebb and flow subtly and was, by the relative size of the square, some hundred yards below. But getting closer and hotter all the time.

  “It reminds me,” Yuri said, almost dreamily, “of the fire in my Grandmama Katooshka’s cottage, just outside of Kiev. On a Saturday night, we would toast marshmallows, and she would sing lullabies to me.”

  “Sounds nice. But I don’t think this is going to be that pleasant.”

  Yuri sighed. “The last time, I was thirty-nine. It was the year that she died. Then it was my turn to sing a lullaby to her.”

  “A bittersweet memory, I’m sure,” Ralph said, then shook his head to loose a bead of sweat from his brow. Warm had definitely become hot, not to say stifling. “However, I do not believe that Grandmama Katooshka’s cottage awaits us below. Her fiery coals, perhaps, but not
her cottage. Listen.”

  They listened. The sound was distant—there were perhaps fifty more yards to go—but there was an audible sucking and slurping to accompany the growing heat. A slow, almost languid sound, but one nonetheless filled with menace.

  “Lava,” Trix said. “Why does every dungeon have to have fucking lava?”

  They could do nothing. The cage continued its descent at about a yard every few seconds, but surprisingly, the impression of their prospects for survival improved the lower they went. For it was becoming clear that the lava was not directly below them but merely casting its fiery glow through the square. They could now see that the bottom of the shaft opened out into a large space, with blurred hints of a long drop (another shaft?) continuing farther below. They approached the space measure by measure, hearts thudding in sequence with each turn of the drop-wheel, and suddenly they were out in the open.

  “Oh,” said Trix, “my god.”

  The cage had been immediately dwarfed. A matchbox in space. On the end of its flimsy rope it was descending through a vast cavern from whose four corners rivers of lava flowed down towards its centre. The surface of the lava roiled and heaved and spat, emitted a constant, dull roar, and the heat was … quite something. Trix, Ralph, and Yuri grabbed the sides of the cage and stared out.

  “It appears,” said Ralph, “as if we have reached some centre of things.”

  “If there is a centre of things,” Trix corrected. “The way this bloody dungeon messes about, I’m not sure it knows its arse from its elbow.”

  “Point taken. But still, you must admit—a significant looking area.”

  Trix nodded, and they lapsed into silence. Partly because they were listening to the ever-creaking rope above them, saying silent prayers, partly because the surroundings had become too overwhelming. The cage had dropped to roughly the centre of the expanse now, nought but a speck, and the cavern’s full layout, whatever its purpose, was revealing itself. The rivers of lava which had so dramatically lit their entrance were not natural occurrences but instead channelled by great stone sluices inset into the four corners of the vast space. Cut into the rock, each sluice was angled down to the concave floor of the chamber—‘bowl’ was possibly a better description—though the lava itself was contained. Thick iron sluice gates blocked the flow of the channels maybe ten yards from the sluices’ ends, but why it was being impeded in this way was unknown. What was clear was that the sluice gates were meant to be opened, because by each of them was positioned a large wheel designed for that very purpose. Curiously, it appeared as if several someones had recently tried to turn the wheels, to free the lava, but they had failed. Their corpses were splayed nearby—burnt out, blackened remains of … well, whatever they had been.

  “What the hell is this place?” Trix said, finally. She meant it rhetorically and was quite startled when Ralph actually answered. “I believe it plays a part in the functioning of the levels as a whole—that is, as part of one vast prison.”

  “What?”

  “Conjecture, of course. But everything we have seen on our descent points to it. Cages, traps, bottlenecks, chains … and now this. Everything restrained, channelled, controlled. Or, at least, designed to be, at some point past. But as is evident everywhere, chaos has come to this place.”

  “I don’t understand—why the lava?”

  Ralph looked down into the bowl. It could now be seen that the base of it was a giant, circular grid. The old man stared into the darkness through the lattice of iron and shivered despite the heat. “Containment.”

  “Containment?”

  “In the form of thousands of tons of lava released to solidify below.”

  Trix stared at the sluices. “Wait a minute—are you suggesting that this … that the dungeon has its own Oblivion Protocol?”

  “Conjecture, Patricia. Conjecture.”

  “Conjecture or not … Jesus, what’s down there?”

  “Death row, by the sound of things,” Yuri drawled. “And we, tovarishes, are heading straight for it.”

  Well, Trix thought—surprisingly calmly, considering—that at least explained the mass panic upstairs. The cage was likely considered the vertical equivalent of the last mile. A last mile whose end they were indeed nearing, although not by heading for the grid. The shaft from which they’d come was off centre, and they were descending between two flows on one side of the cavern. Below, a black square hinted that they would soon reenter a shaft similar to the first one. By the look of it, there was to be the same clearance of only inches around the elevator cage, but that in itself wasn’t a problem any more. No, the problem now lay in the fact that the cage had fallen into a small orbit on the end of its rope. The rope’s continued unravelling was partly to blame, small lurches setting off the rotation, but for the most part the lava sluices were responsible. Their proximity was felt more intensely with every foot of the trio’s descent, buffeting them with conflicting waves of searing heat, and the resultant air pockets were starting to sway them wildly. There was a good chance the cage would miss the opening of the second shaft, hit and crumple on its sides. All they could hope was, if they remained still, it would settle down.

  Another lurch put paid to that, causing a strut of wood that Ralph had been holding for support to snap off in his hands. The sudden shift in his centre of gravity set the cage swaying even more. And then, suddenly, it was on fire.

  It wasn’t the heat itself that was responsible—though the slats had begun to smoulder some—but rather the fallout from the sluices. The molten rock was in a highly excited state, spitting and gobbing sparks and lumps into the air, onto the surrounding rocks, forming rivulets like infernal candle wax. These great arcs of liquid fire, where they met, formed a burning rain that was in danger of engulfing the cage.

  “The lava should not be this disturbed,” Ralph said. “Held as it is, it should be in a semisolid state, crusted even. Something is aggravating it.”

  Trix shot him a glance as she frantically tried to pound out the fire. Her efforts were hampered by the fact that she had to do so as gently as possible so as not to shake apart what remained of the cage. Opposite her, where there had been another ignition, Yuri was attempting the same.

  “That’s interesting, Ralph,” Trix gasped, “but do you think you could give us a bloody hand here?”

  “What? Oh yes, yes, I am sorry.”

  The old man did so distractedly, his eyes on the lava, suspicious. And as he studied it, the cause of his concern made itself known: a shape in the lava that shouldn’t be there, moving, writhing within. It had a disturbingly human shape. It couldn’t be human, of course, nothing human could survive that, but it was only as it rose from the lava, as casually as if it were stirring from a nap, that it became clear how inhuman it was. A long-limbed, sharp-featured creature of scorching flame, it was a thing born of a seething forge between worlds.

  A fire elemental.

  “Patricia, I hate to burden you with yet more concerns …”

  Trix turned, and her gaze locked on the elemental. Her eyes widened.

  “What—is—that?”

  “It’s a fire elemental.”

  “A fire elemental.”

  “Yes, indeed. Their theoretical existence has always intrigued me, though no physical evidence of such has surfaced to date. Now, to see one firsthand. Patricia, I must say, this has quite made my da …”

  “Ralph, be quiet.”

  A second elemental was rising from the second lava flow, a third and fourth from those across the cavern. They mimicked the actions of the first, crouching on the rims of their sluices, jagged, grinning smears on what passed for heads, staring at their guests with imp-like amusement.

  “At least we know what turned our friends into crispy potato chips,” Yuri said. “The question is, who or what summoned them?”

  “Let’s save that,” Trix replied, “for later, eh?”

  From the rims of each of the sluices, the fire elementals rose into the air, fl
aring with heat as the cavern fanned their flaming forms. In a series of darting manoeuvres, they swooped about the cage, above, around, below, and if there was any doubt that they had mischief in mind, it was dispelled as one came to hover directly in front of Trix, a diagonal slash of a mouth zig-zagging into a sadistic smile. Trix stood her ground—such as it was—even though she could feel the tip of her nose burning and her face erupting with sweat. The elemental cocked its head then angled away in a throom of fire. But not very far. It and its fellow elementals now surrounded the cage on all four sides.

  “Stay calm, Patricia. This may not be as bad as it looks.”

  Trix stared at the old man. “Ralph, we’re in a cage on a rope that’s about to snap, in a cavern full of lava, about to be buzzed by fucking fire demons. How can it not be as bad as it looks?”

  “Elementals. Not demons.”

  “I don’t care, Ralph.”

  “My point is that for all their ferocity, summoned elementals are essentially fragile creatures with a very specific weakness: the polar opposite of their own element. Should they attack, we can use this weakness to defend ourselves.”

  The cage shuddered and swung as one of the elementals grabbed onto its side. It stared in at them, and battered by inferno-level heat, they staggered back to the other side of the cage. The wood the elemental clung to had already blackened; now it smoked and burst into flames.

  “Should they attack, Ralph?” Trix slid some waterbolts into her crossbow, while Ralph hastily conjured some water spell or another. “I’ve got these, you’ve got those, but what’s Yuri going to—”

  There was a distinctive and horribly familiar sound of a fly being unzipped.

  “No. Don’t you dare. Don’t you—”

  “What else do you expect me to do, English? Gob on them?”

  “Use the water in your canteen.”

  “I am,” the Russian smirked. “Just … indirectly.”

  “Where does it all come from? Just tell me that. I mean, honestly, do you have a secret pipeline from Moscow?”