Dungeon Masters

by Mike Wild

  Trix began to climb the overflow.

  “English, what are you doing?”

  Ralph sighed. “No point in arguing, Urine. Besides, can you see another way out of here?”

  He couldn’t. And with the old man, he reluctantly followed. The overflow curved at the top, passing two iron-barred arches to the sides, and finally leveled at another with bars that had been punched in at some point by great force. In Trix’s wake, they ducked under, crept the length of a passage still wet from the exit of the feeding tube—and stopped dead.

  Hell was laid out before them.

  The thing they’d trailed had retracted, with the others, into an expansive circular chamber. Some kind of hub, it had a number of passages radiating off it, the sound of battle on the bridge coming from one of them. But what mattered was what lay at the hub’s heart. Kh’Borian’s ace card, the soulstripper, was utter abomination—a malformed, constantly shifting globe of glistening grey flesh fifty and sometimes more yards in diameter that rotated twixt floor and ceiling. Like the feeding tubes—which grew from its underside—it was pressured from within by captive souls, a countless number whose constant writhing as they wailed in utter despair made it impossible to keep track of their struggles. They looked so much like living bodies it took some effort to see them for what they actually were—the essence of the dead imprisoned by the vilest, most powerful necromancy. Their banshee-like wails intensified as, much to Trix and the others’ nausea, the feeding tubes danced momentarily about the glistening central mass before plunging like nightmarish elephants’ trunks into various orifices the soulstripper opened to accommodate them. The tubes gurgled and disgorged their rotted content, and the soulstripper bloated with the food of putrefaction they brought.

  What was even more sickening was the source of putrefaction. It was difficult to miss. The walls and floor of the hub were strung or littered with corpses—crucified corpses, impaled corpses, entangled corpses piled high—hundreds, perhaps thousands, of them. Goblins, orcs, ratmen, minotaurs, even bulbous-bodied spiders, their remains dangled or lying one on top of the other in various states of decay from near fresh to little more than smears dripping from barbed spikes or soup-like patches draining into grilles in the floor. The lack of a population explosion on the levels was explained right here—Kh’Borian’s things weren’t just inhabitants, he’d made them a food source for his vile conjuration. All the soulstripper had to do was wait for them to rot and provide the juices of the dead.

  Yuri swallowed. “You are certain we must go this way, English?”

  Trix pointed. On a raised dais, on the far side of the hub, sat the teleportal. She began picking her way through the dead, ignoring the stench, squelching, and presence of the soulstripper itself. She didn’t think it was aware of them, but nonetheless each step was measured, in case it made a move. Only twice did she falter, spotting rotting army uniforms amongst the otherwise monstrous remains. She tried not to think who their owners had once been.

  Yuri and Ralph followed, but it was not easy going for any of them. Passing close to the soulstripper was like being in a gravity well. It sucked at them. Their hearts pounded, heads throbbed, lungs struggled to inhale. It felt as if they were being shut down. But at last, the teleportal. Dark without its crystal, it was also damaged—lopsided. The reason was clear. Its stone surround was cracked, its right column cleaved through at the diagonal, so top and bottom halves jutted like broken bone. Even if its crystal were present, it wasn’t teleporting anybody anywhere, runes totally out of alignment. Ralph ran his fingertips over the patterns, sighed as they glowed slightly and then almost immediately faded.

  “We need to brace this somehow,” the old man said. “Find beams, something to act as a ram, lash it together.”

  “Fine, I’ll just pop to B&Q, shall I?” Trix responded. “Ralph, even if that stuff were lying around, we don’t have time for a construction job.”

  “This is true, Professor.” Yuri had already braced himself against the side of the teleportal, his back against the cleaved column, boots digging in. “I fear I will have to improvise.”

  Trix winced as she watched Yuri groaning with the effort to achieve the first inch of a many-inch shift. “Yuri, are you sure you can do this?”

  “Go find your crystal, English,” the Russian gasped. “I promise that by the time you return, everything will be right as rain.”

  Trix nodded. Ralph moved to join her. She shook her head.

  “No, Ralph. I need you here to watch his back. No pun intended.”

  The old man looked concerned. “Be careful, Patricia.”

  “Hey, I’m getting to know this dungeon like the back of my hand.” Okay, so, with gloves on. Trix sighed and again summoned her visions, straining to match her surroundings, to lead herself step by step to where the crystal lay. They took her first into one of the passages east of the hub, then onto downward spiral steps into an alchemical lab with apparatus smashed or long bubbled dry. Beyond, she traversed a raised, caged walkway dissecting a room of dangling gibbets and then entered a wide, well-like shaft filled with a bubbling green goo crossed by a rotating platform—amazingly, in the right position—which creaked ominously beneath her tread. It struck her how quiet it was in the bowels of the dungeon and how surprising she hadn’t been beset by Kh’Borian’s hordes. But as the godleech was packing his suitcase, as it were, for the trip between dimensions, she guessed he was a little distracted.

  The dungeon quaked again, and beneath the platform the green goo roiled and splashed against the well’s walls, where it hissed. She ran. Her flight brought her, suddenly and unexpectedly, to an area immediately familiar, so much so that she could almost see the glimmer of the teleportal crystal in her mind’s eye. Even for the levels, it was something of a run-down neighbourhood. A small warren of rooms all but collapsed and filled with debris. Junk seemingly brought here from all over. Trix didn’t need to narrowly avoid stepping in a pile of droppings to know who the hoarders were. Rats. From these stools, giant ones. But where were they? Where was their nest? A-ha, yes, over there! A tunnel at the base of the wall. Trix ducked and crawled through, knowing she was close. She had her dagger drawn as she emerged out the other end but soon found she had no need. The chamber beyond had rats in it, all right, eleven or so of them, but all were dead. They’d died nastily, too—hacked to pieces in what looked to have been a frenzied battle with an axe.

  She began to dig through the stuff that had been dragged into the heart of the rats’ lair. But no crystal. Damn it, it was here somewhere. She knew it was.

  “Looking for something, sis?”

  Trix froze. Could barely turn to face the owner of the voice that had spoken behind her. Could scarcely believe it was real. But then she did turn, saw Ian in the flesh for the first time in years, and fell to her knees beside him. It wasn’t emotion, it was necessity—her brother was a fucking mess. He was slumped in the shadows, bloodied axe beside him, wearing a weird mix of levels clothing and old uniform all but shredded, flesh torn to bone. Most worrying was the greenish tint to his skin—a sure sign of poison, and a lot of it. He grunted as she used a med kit from her backpack on his wounds, but other than a weak potion, there was little she could do for the toxins. Neither spoke as she worked, though their eyes were locked. Then Trix broke the silence.

  “Been up to much lately?”

  “Here’s the funny thing,” he said. “I fend off hordes of the undead, minor demons, gnolls, djinn, and god knows what to get here. Then fucking rats take me down? Still, got this, which I guess is what you’re looking for.” Ian smiled feebly and held up the missing teleportal crystal. A sudden, wracking cough caused it to fall from his palm, and as Trix went to grab it, he caught her hand. “I’m sorry … for the years … when you thought …”

  “That you were dead? Yeah, we have a lot to talk about, brother mine. But not now. First, we need to get you to help.”

  “Too far. Never make it.”

  “If the crysta
l works, we have to go only halfway, remember? Now bite on this—this is going to hurt.”

  Trix ignored Ian’s cries as she dragged him through the rat run; she sighed when they were able to stand again, and she supported him with her shoulder. It took considerably longer to retrace her steps carrying his weight, but at last they made it to the hub. Trix tossed the crystal to Ralph, who almost missed catching it on catching sight of Ian.

  “Major Hunter,” he said. “It is a very great pleasure to see you again.”

  “Huuuuuurrrnhhh,” Yuri confirmed. “Uhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrr.”

  The latter’s somewhat monosyllabic greeting was due to the fact he’d almost managed to realign the teleportal. On seeing Ian’s state—and knowing what was needed—the Russian roared as he put everything he had into one last shove. His boots skidded on the floor, his muscles threatened to burst, then with a welcome grating the column at last slid into place. Runes began to illuminate from the base of each column, and when the two weaving strands met at the top, the structure fused whole and the space within the frame exploded outward with … well, space. Trix escaped most of the blast as she was lowering Ian to the floor, but Ralph and Yuri, who’d stepped to the front of the teleportal, curious, were blown off their feet and onto their backsides some distance away. So, Trix thought, that’s what happens when you create a wormhole.

  Now all that was needed was the crystal to lock the teleportal down. Trix turned to Ralph, who was dazed and a little worse for wear, and the old man enlisted Yuri’s help with a leg up to put the crystal in place. He hesitated.

  “The portal is damaged. There may be microfractures in the crystal. I can’t guarantee how long it will last.”

  Trix bit her lip. They had no choice. “Do it,” she said. “Bring them through.”

  Ralph inserted the crystal, and the wormhole stabilised. A second later Jentiss strode into the hub, followed by Torb, then a number of warriors, among them, Trix was pleased to see, some of her own, including Jackson. The medic spotted Ian and rushed to tend to him. Behind, the teleportal began to fizzle. Trix barked orders at new arrivals to ‘move it’, but, of course, it was useless if no one in transit knew the field was shutting down. They got three more people through before it happened. Only half of the fourth arrived, a cleaved torso and partial limbs slapping, twitching, to the ground. The only mercy was that death had been instantaneous. Trix and Jentiss looked at each other—as tragic as the loss was, the greater problem was they’d got only about a third of the force they’d planned to bring through. And now they had other worries. The soulstripper had started spinning faster and faster, apparently going into overdrive.

  It was likely that the teleportal’s activation had set it off, but at first Trix was at a loss to work out how the soulstripper could pose a threat. Then the feeding tubes slopped from the orifices, and she knew. The central placement of the soulstripper, the seemingly inexhaustible reach of its tubes, meant that it was transforming into a massive, multi-tentacled bludgeon, equipped to demolish anything in its path. And demolish it did. The tubes smashed into stone pillars supporting the hub, sweeping away pillars as they also swept away warriors trying to flee their reach. Some died instantly; others screamed as they were buried beneath falling rubble. Jentiss barked orders, and melee fighters raced in, chopping and slashing at the thick tentacles, but the chance of reaching the main body of the thing, to really do it harm, was nonexistent. Archers and mages tried, dodging and ducking to launch ranged attacks, and they might have succeeded were it not for the fact they started to falter, weaken, fall to their knees, as did the warriors still alive. Ralph, launching his own assault, crumpled too, confused, until he realised what was happening.

  “My god,” he said, staring at the blurred, agonised outlines of his fellow fallen and at the pulsing, bloated state of the soulstripper itself, “it’s trying to pull souls from living bodies.”

  Yuri also had dropped to his knees. His flesh greying, his very essence seeming to leak through his pores. “It does more than try, Professor,” he groaned. “How do we stop—?”

  There was a whumf and blast of heat from beside him, and his profile was lit by flame. The rocket that Trix had launched flew between him and the old man with that slightly wavering but determined trajectory common to such things. It hit—bang!—on target, entering the soulstripper through a dilated orifice. A second later, it detonated, and the soulstripper blew apart in a storm of gore. Everyone ducked as its remains splattered the hub, the rain taking a full minute to ease. Trix’s attention was focused not on the gore but on what passed through it, above it—the same forms the soulstrippper had trapped, no longer desperately writhing, no longer wailing, but dissipating in the air with a drawn-out, spectral sigh.

  The spent rocket launcher clattered as she discarded it on the floor.

  “Neat,” Yuri said. “But I thought you were saving that for the big guy?”

  “Fuck it. We’re on Plan B.”

  “Yes, well,” Ralph said with a cough, “if ‘the big guy’ didn’t know we were here before, I suspect he might now.”

  What Ralph was hinting at came in the form of numerous lurching shadows, screeches, screams, and roars from the passages leading into the hub. In seconds, Trix had lost count of how many DOME classifications she could hear among the zoo-like cacophony, but one thing was clear: from somewhere in the depths, Kh’Borian had summoned his monster squad and was throwing everything he had at them. The small force that had made it through the teleportal blanched with the realisation they were about to be swamped.

  “Hold your positions!” Jentiss commanded, drawing her sword. “And,” she added, quietly, “pray to the gods that were.”

  “Never been one for prayers myself,” Trix said, flicking her head towards the soulstripper. “Aren’t you forgetting that thing won’t be reanimating anything anymore?”

  Jentiss stared, then realised. There were other sounds. From the direction of the bridge. The same clash of weapons and magics they’d left behind but drawing closer, accompanied by triumphant battle cries, Yillarnyan and human. The first fighters to finally make it over the bridge, bloodied, panting, but eager to join battle, burst into view. They were followed by many. Jentiss’s chest rose at the sight of them.

  “Orders, ma’am?”

  “Secure the hub. Expand our perimeter. Kill anything trying to kill you.” She gave Trix an acknowledging nod and smile. “This time, when they go down, they stay down.”

  The sounds of battle recommenced, now in the many passages off the hub. But Trix instinctively knew none were the right path to take. Jentiss saw her puzzlement, then gazed around at the remains of the soulstripper and bodies of the many victims who had been its food. Her brow furrowed at the sight of so many of their dead. A gesture brought a number of mages to her side.

  “Burn the remains,” she said. “Burn everything.”

  The mages nodded solemnly, and their hands ignited. Their combined power incinerated the soulstripper and victims swiftly, and when done a new passage previously obscured by a mountain of rotting carcasses was revealed. It was as wide as an avenue and sloped downwards into darkness.

  “This way,” Jentiss said.

  Trix turned to her people. Jackson she left tending to Ian but picked a small squad to accompany herself, Ralph, and Yuri, along with Jentiss, Torb, and the mages already assembled. “Arneson, Holmes, you’re on point. Cook, Moldvay, flanks. Mentzer, Mearls, watch our six.”

  “We’ve got you, Major.”

  They moved in. Jentiss lit a torch in its sconce, and its fire ignited a trough of thick oil, lighting others below. As the illumination spread, Trix saw a descent untrodden in generations, thick with cobwebs, its sides lined with familiar-looking shapes. Trix tore webbing away and saw they were weapons. The same weapons that lined the chasm—giant crossbows, trebuchets—here secured for recoil and primed for firing, and all pointing down. Like DOME’s own boom guns, they’d have made an effective first line of defence had t
hey ever needed firing, but since Kh’Borian had opted for a somewhat unusual escape route, they’d simply been left to rot.

  The group began to descend. Trix appreciated now how her boffins must have felt when the boom guns had ticked behind their backs, because the quakes hitting the levels with increasing frequency and severity made the wood and ropes of the ancient weapons creak and groan behind her. Miraculously, nothing was loosed, and they reached the base of the incline. Then had to do it all again. The descent turned back on itself, mirroring the slope of the first, defences and all. It did so again, and then once more, where to Trix’s relief it evened out into a lengthy corridor that was weapons free. Stone-clad walls eventually gave way to natural rock, and a slight breeze stirred the stagnant air. It smelled of harpy shit. It smelled of being back where they’d started.

  Sure enough, they emerged in the chasm. Except this time some five hundred feet down. Far above, tiny harpies circled the bridge recently won, screeches distant as they feasted on the rotten flesh of those finally fallen dead. Trix didn’t care about the harpies anymore. Because ahead of them, spanning the chasm’s still considerable depth, was another bridge, this one formed of natural rock. At its far end, built into the chasm wall, were a pair of foreboding iron doors. Trix’s visions swam in her head. She knew those doors. Knew what lay beyond.

  Trix, Jentiss, and Ralph took the lead; Yuri, Torb, and the mages behind. The soldiers of both armies came last. All had to take care as they crossed, not only because of the narrowness of the bridge, but the fact it was thick with the shit that had scented the breeze. More than once a boot slid and almost sent a soldier over the side. But the shit was to prove the least of their problems.

  They were a little more than halfway across when came the biggest quake yet. The whole chasm rumbled. Everyone on the bridge stumbled, flailed for balance and purchase. Three soldiers did fall, their screams barely heard above the grating and grinding of rock. Shards broke away from the chasm walls to smash into the bridge. Then came the sound none wanted to hear—a sound like snapping ice that accompanied cracks appearing in the rock beneath their feet. Trix and Jentiss stared at each other, weighing their chances of making it across, but they were almost immediately scuppered. A section of rock at the far end of the bridge broke away whole, separating it from the doors, crashing noisily into the depths. It was followed by another. And another. In mere seconds almost a third of the bridge was gone, and the gap was heading towards them.