by DB King
“But wait until you see what’s happened!” squealed Ella.
They got to the square entranceway where the Grove chamber’s entrance was placed, and Marcus saw that the magical doorway was already in place. “You opened this?” he asked Ella.
She nodded. “I didn’t think you’d mind, not for Old Jay. He wanted to experience it.”
“You’re right, I don’t mind at all,” said Marcus. “I just didn’t know you could do that.”
“Oh, yes,” said Ella. “I can operate the Grove dungeon’s entrance, just not the combat chambers.”
Marcus nodded thoughtfully and lifted a hand to open the door. It swung back, and, with Ella at his shoulder and Hammer by his side, he stepped in.
The first thing he noticed was the change that had come over the chamber. It was as if fall had come to the grove. The leaves on the trees had turned to orange, and many of them had fallen to carpet the ground. There were more trees, too. The three that had been there before had expanded into a little woodland, easily twenty or thirty young trees.
Under his feet and around his knees, the grass was tall and thick, the seed heads exploding and drifting about his hands as he stepped through. There was a rich smell in the cool air. The dog sneezed.
In the pale evening light that filled the grove, Marcus saw a man sitting by the fire at the camp spot. He was a tall, well-built man in his late fifties, with a full brown beard that had a scattering of gray around the mouth. His hair was shoulder length and hung about his face as he leaned over, turning a spit of meat in the fire. The smell of cooking drifted over and made Marcus’s mouth water. Hammer broke into a trot and ran toward the man.
And then the man looked up.
“Old Jay!?” said Marcus in disbelief. The man was sighted, that was plain, and his body was hale and hearty, but there was no mistaking him. It was the leader of the Gutter Gang, transformed.
“Marcus,” said the man, standing and smiling. “You see the change the dungeon magic has wrought on me?” He spread his arms so Marcus could admire him.
“But… your eyes!” said Marcus.
Ella spoke. “Jay is a man of deeply good intention. He came into the Grove chamber an old and wizened man, and fell asleep under the tree. I climbed up into the branches and fell asleep too. When we woke, his sight and his health had been restored, and the grove was changed to this fall scene, as you see it now.”
Marcus looked around in wonder at the trees, the falling leaves, and then back at Jay’s bright eyes.
“I think,” Ella continued, “that it took a great amount of energy to restore Jay’s sight. That’s why the grove has changed from summer to fall, because of the energy that’s been expended.”
Jay shook Marcus firmly by the hand. “It’s a miracle,” he said, “and I have you to thank for it. This dungeon possesses the most amazing magic.”
“Don’t forget that it’s your intention that’s caused it, Jay,” said Ella. “Not everyone would have had such a good result. Some might even have been consumed by the dungeon, but not you.”
They all stood for a moment, thinking about that. Then Hammer gave a cough. “Are you going to eat that bit of meat, or…?”
Marcus and Ella laughed, and while Old Jay couldn’t understand Hammer’s words, he soon laughed along with them. The dungeon had provided pork and beer, and a loaf of bread, so they all sat around the fire as the light faded. Marcus told Jay and Ella everything that had happened—about the fight with the ratmen, and the information he had gained from scouting in the ratmen’s domain.
“So, we’ve come to it at last,” Jay said quietly.
“What do you mean?” Marcus asked.
Jay looked at him and gave a wry grin. “The Gutter Gang and the Sewer Slayers have been on track for a fight for years, and the ratmen are even worse. It was only a matter of time before they decided to try to evict us. Honestly, I think the main thing that kept them from doing so up to now was the defensibility of our position. Now, they have the alliance and the numbers to challenge us, and the extra motivation of the dungeons.”
Marcus took a breath to speak, but Jay held up a hand. “Don’t feel bad about it. It’s because of you, and because of the dungeons, that we’re in a position to defend ourselves at all. If this alliance had happened a year ago, we wouldn’t have stood a chance. Now, we’re going to have more than a fighting chance. In fact, I think we’ll probably win. I’ve never seen the Gutter Gang in such good health. Ella tells me it’s a side-effect of your dungeon magic. Yes, with better equipment, I think we’ll be able to hold our own against them.”
He looked Marcus in the eye and paused for a moment before continuing. “And that’s why,” he said, “when the fight comes, I want you to help me lead them.”
Marcus nodded. “I’ll do everything I can, Jay. “When it comes time to fight, I’m sure you’re right, and we’ll be able to hold our own.”
“Good,” said Jay with a smile. He stood. “I’ll pass on the news to the rest of the Gang, and tell them that we’re expecting a consignment of arms and armor, too. Kairn Greymane has some combat experience, and he’s been drilling some of the gang in basic combat techniques. I’ll increase the intensity of that training.”
Kairn Greymane was a dwarf, an exile from the Dwarven Realms north of Doran. He was one of the few members of the Gutter Gang with military experience, having fought in the dwarven civil war fifty years ago. He was a good fighter and a strong, level-headed member of the gang. Marcus was pleased that Jay had put Kairn in charge of training the fighters.
Jay left them, and Ella flew down to sit on a log of wood near Marcus. Hammer, his belly full, had fallen into a deep sleep.
“That sounds like quite a fight with the ratmen, Marcus,” Ella said.
“It was,” he replied, “but I won in the end. I put them all in the dungeon, and I’m keen to see what they will have evolved into.”
Ella nodded thoughtfully. “Me too,” she said. “It might be pretty evil. They come with some bad intentions, these ratmen, and the addition of a fire element could lead to some rather nasty combinations. Also, there’s something I forgot to mention before. Leaving corpses of people and creatures who were killed by the dungeon generally doesn’t influence the shape of the dungeon’s progression. But actually taking corpses in—particularly the corpses of evil beings—well, it’s not such a good idea. We might find that this new dungeon is darker, more dangerous, and more unpredictable.”
“Yeah,” Marcus said. “I was thinking that too, afterward. In future, I think I’ll start to make more choices about what goes in the dungeons for evolution. The current monsters are great, but I want to start bringing in new elements. Things like water, crystals, maybe even some plants. What do you think?”
Ella was nodding. “That’s the best way to approach it,” she said. “Once you’ve started to get a feel for the way the dungeon uses ingredients, you can start to guide the evolutions more and more by choosing different elements to add. You’ll never be able to completely control the creation of the monsters, but you can get a pretty good idea of the different ways different elements combine, and then use that to your advantage.”
“Right!” Marcus agreed enthusiastically. He leaned forward, his eyes bright with the idea. “So, the stuff that goes into the dungeon is going to turn into monsters and traps, right? But there’s also going to be an element of environment to take into account as well.”
“What do you mean?” Ella asked, smiling.
“Well, look at the shadow-duelist’s chamber. The duelist’s gear went in there, and it turned into ghost duelists, but the chamber itself was based on the Duelist’s Plaza in the docklands. In the bladehand chamber, I’d put a pebble. I actually picked that pebble up outside one of the fighting pits over in the Goreway district, and the floor of the bladehand chamber turned out like the sand of the fighting pits. I’m guessing that this means the history or the affinity of the items have some influence on the kind of environmen
t that develops in the chamber. Do you see what I mean?”
“Sure,” Ella said encouragingly. “You’re saying that elements that come from places carry strong affinities for those particular places, and that can shape the dungeon chamber environment.”
“Exactly!” Marcus continued. “So it follows that if we could experiment and work out how different elements changed the environment, we could get different kinds of themes going, by using specific elements. We could put in something from the docks to get a sea environment, for example, or… I don’t know… something from the Wasteland to get a bog.”
“Or even something from some other country to get a different environment again?”
“That’s right!” Marcus said, glad the faerie was on the same page. “This is the greatest trading port in the world, there’s all kinds of stuff available to buy up in the Merchants’ Town. The sky’s the limit!”
Chapter 15
“I like the way you’re thinking,” Ella said. “What else? I can tell that you have more ideas about this.”
“But don’t you know it all already?” Marcus asked.
“Not necessarily. A different dungeon master will have different approaches. Go on,” she urged him.
He smiled. “Well, how about this. With the bladehand, the gold coins and the iron dagger became the monster, and the stones we put in became the traps. But with the duelist chamber, I put in no plain metal, and the duelists have no face, no bodies. What if the elemental ingredient influences the bodies of the monsters?”
“By that logic, the flammable material you put in with the ratmen corpses would create what… some kind of rat monster with fire for a body?”
Marcus shrugged. “I guess so.”
“And what about upgrading or adding other elements to existing monsters? Have you thought about doing that?”
“Actually, no,” he replied. “I hadn’t. I guess I assumed that once the monsters were created, they were fixed in place.”
“Not at all,” said Ella, shaking her head. “Actually, you should be able to alter the elemental composition of the chambers directly. I’m not sure how you would go about it—every dungeon master is different.”
“I bet I could do it through my model table,” Marcus said. He snapped his fingers, and the dungeon management table appeared. The firelight glowed in the black shining glass that made up the body of the table.
Marcus stood over it, a bright glow from the very table itself shone up and lit his eager face as he leaned over, looking at the model of the dungeon that was laid out in front of him. He raised his hand over the model, considering the elemental components of the dungeon.
As he thought about the elements, something began to happen. Marcus felt a warm tingling sensation in the palm of his hand. Red light glowed from his hand down onto the tabletop, illuminating the models of the chambers. The little models of the monsters—the bladehand and the shadow-duelists—cast dark shadows in the new glow.
And then, it happened.
The elemental runes appeared over the chambers. They were written in the script of Doran, clean lines like thick brushstrokes floating above the chambers. Over the bladehand chamber, the runes for Iron and Sand floated. Above the shadow-duelist chamber, Steel and Flight.
And here, at the back of the model, was the new chamber, the rat chamber. The two elements displayed in the slots there were Pestilence and Fire. Under the elements, Marcus could see the new chamber—and something shaded writhing in the chamber. Something large.
Ella floated by Marcus’s shoulder. She was gazing down at the runes alongside him.
“The elements are so much more varied than I’d expected,” Marcus murmured, gazing at the lit table. “You know, we usually think of four elements—earth, air, water, fire. Over in Doran, they often add metal as a fifth element, and the dwarves add stone as well. But this—look at the duelist chamber. It says Flight as an element. That must have been added by the feathers. And here, over the new rat chamber—Pestilence—it makes me wonder how many elements there are?”
Ella shrugged. “I don’t think there’s any limit. I think there’s as many elements as a man can imagine, at least when it comes to adding things to a dungeon.”
He looked at her, dropping his hand. When he turned back to the table, he was pleased to see the elemental slots still displayed.
“I guess the next thing would be to actually choose what ingredient goes into the elemental slot, and which into the monster slot, and to work out where the crossover is. I’m starting to feel that I’ve only scratched the surface of this dungeon creation art. There’s so much more to learn!”
“There’s always going to be more to learn, and more to do,” Ella agreed.
“For now though,” Marcus said, “I think I’m going to have a go at running the new dungeon chamber, without attempting to swap out any of the elements. That will be a thing to do later.”
He rearranged the dungeon chambers on the table so he could access the new chamber directly, and then moved to the wall of the grove. Raising a hand, he placed the entrance. The stone morphed and changed to open a new gateway into the new chamber.
“That looks pretty creepy,” Ella said.
Marcus had to agree. The doorway to the new chamber was blackened wood, as if it had been burned with fire, and heat pulsed from it. Around the edges of the door, a red light glowed.
“Take care,” said Ella, before floating back toward the trees and the camp.
Marcus drew his sword and shouldered the door open.
Heat hit him as soon as he stepped inside. He heard a low rumbling within the corridor, as if fire was blazing in a chamber somewhere below. The heat was stifling, and sweat immediately beaded on his forehead.
As he advanced carefully up the corridor, he thought of all the things that had gone into this chamber. The rats themselves, of course, but there were also the weapons: a net, a trident, a battleaxe, and a flamethrower. The wood of the battleaxe’s shaft, the flammable liquid of the flamethrower. Fur, blood, hair, metal, wood, leather. There was an evil feeling in the corridor. He would have to take care not to get hurt in this chamber.
There was something about it that he could not quite put his finger on—a sense of threat and looming danger that he had not felt in the other dungeons.
A sense of present evil.
What have I created here? he wondered. He couldn’t shake the feeling that placing such dark creatures as the ratmen in the dungeon had somehow been… not a mistake, exactly, but a risky experiment.
His feet were silent as he walked the narrow corridor. His eyes moved quickly all around, looking out for traps. The last time he’d run his own dungeon solo, he’d stepped right onto a trap. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
He also didn’t want to use his Ward Detect spell unless he absolutely had to—he wanted to save his energy for the flight. He had eyes, after all, and a head on his shoulders, so he would use both to locate any potential traps.
This time, he saw the rune well before he stepped on it. It was a fire rune—he didn’t recognize it exactly, but there was no mistaking what it meant. It was outlined in flame on the wall on the left, about ten yards in front of him.
He looked for a torch to use to trigger it from a distance, but there were none. The whole corridor seemed to be lit as if from inside the walls with a deep red glow, but there was no discernible source for the light. Gingerly, he approached the rune, seeing no way of passing it without triggering it.
With a sudden sharp swish, something dropped from the ceiling.
“Argh!” Marcus yelled as he threw himself backward. He landed hard and rolled, finding that a huge battle-axe had swung down from the ceiling and nearly taken his head off!
Where’s the trigger? he wondered as he got to his feet. The axe swung menacingly back and forth in place, hanging by a thick chain from the ceiling.
“Ward Detect,” he said, activating the spell. He looked around with the spell active,
but couldn’t see where the trigger was located. He figured that this particular trigger either had some cloaking mechanism, or was too high a level for his spell to effectively seek out.
He turned off the spell and returned to focusing once more on his natural vision, although this had been enhanced by the dungeon’s progression.
Then he saw it—a small gray rune on the floor that he had stepped right on. His attention had been so focused on the fire rune up ahead that he hadn’t even noticed the smaller one.
That was a subtle trap, and it seemed like a new upgrade for the dungeons. There had never been that kind of double-bluff trap before. It was tricky and subtle.
Cruel and cunning, like the ratmen, he thought. He would have to be extra-wary. As he reached up and grabbed the battle-axe, he couldn’t help feeling proud of this new style of trap. It was pretty neat, a double trap and a distraction like that. He grinned. The possibility for ever-increasing depth and complexity in his dungeons was very satisfying.
The axe was heavy, twice the size of the original ratman’s axe, but of much the same design. Marcus pulled at it, heaving with all his magically enhanced strength. He heard a crack, and the huge thing came crashing to the floor, trailing a snapped length of chain.
He hauled it upright. It was so huge he almost laughed out loud. A giant could have wielded it comfortably, but even with his new-found strength, it would be a ridiculously cumbersome weapon. All the same, it would do for triggering the fire trap.
With a grunt, he threw the monstrous axe down the corridor where it passed the fire-rune. As he’d suspected, the mere passing of an object triggered the fire trap. And what a trap it was!
A net of red-hot steel chain-links fired from the side of the wall where the rune had been. It seemed to appear right out of the solid stone, blasting across the corridor trailing sparks and lumps of molten metal behind it. It wrapped around the axe and burned into the handle, then whipped around it, encasing it completely in a flaming wrap of red-hot chain.
