by DB King
Pleased at thinking this out, he smiled. He would do his best to listen to those instincts when they showed themselves. Marcus could hear the sound of fighting from within the Bladehand chamber now. To pass the time, he attempted to conjure the model dungeon table. To his surprise, it worked. He had thought that perhaps it was something he could only do within the grove, but apparently that was not the case. The black glass table appeared, with the models of the dungeons large on its surface.
He looked at the different elements, and then leaned closer. There was a spell hovering over the table!
“What in the…?” he muttered as he read the glowing text. “Dungeon… Meld!”
The world spun around him. Suddenly, he was looking down from a height, straight into the Bladehand chamber! The duelists were using weighted nets to hinder the bladehand. It was not going as well as they’d obviously hoped it would, but they seemed to be having fun anyway. They had tangled two of the bladehand’s arms up in a weighted net, and Jonah was attempting to get close enough to stab it in the eye again, but it kept throwing him back. The other two were trying to distract it by throwing torches, but not succeeding.
Marcus leaned back a little, his awareness expanding. Part of his awareness was still with his body, leaning motionless over the glowing table in the Underway corridor. Part of it was watching the adventurers fight. A third part was looking in at the Harpy dungeon.
Here, he could see the shadow-duelists moving restlessly about, swords in hand. A ghostly wind stirred the leaves in the trees, and in the branches the harpy slept. The trees themselves seemed to stir for a moment, a flicker of awareness moving through the whole dungeon chamber.
“Down here, it is, for sure,” said a voice.
Marcus snapped his awareness to the tunnel. The voices came from the entrance.
“Can it be? This is just an old sewer tunnel,” said a second.
“This is where they went, there’s no doubt,” said the first voice firmly. It was the voice of a woman.
“Come on, Anja, these are brand new shoes I’ve got on here. I don’t want to go walking about in a sewer,” whined a man.
The one called Anja snapped a terse reply that Marcus missed, and there was a ripple of laughter from several other male voices. Marcus stretched his awareness away from the table and up the corridor, toward the entrance. There was a group of people there, four men and a woman.
The woman was in her late twenties, good-looking but hard-eyed and grim-faced. She held a bare longsword with a curved crossguard in one hand. She wore a steel plate over boiled leather with a surcoat of interlocking bronze plates. Behind her were four men in heavy armor, armed with swords, long shields, and spears. The man closest to her, who was obviously the man who had been speaking, stepped back, muttering to the sound of his companions’ jibes.
“Shut up, you lot,” snapped the woman. “This is where the duelists went. They’ve been boasting all over town that they’ve been favored by the dungeon master, and Diremage Xeron wants to know what’s happening. You all read the bounty letter—he thinks this ‘dungeon master’ is part of a vampire invasion. We need to root that out before it takes hold.”
“Vampires,” said another of the men, a stocky, fair man with a scarred face. “I don’t like the sound of that. There’s all kinds of weird things in the Underway—ratmen and murgals and who knows what else. Couldn’t we just tell Xeron that we went and looked and didn’t find anything? He might pay us for trying anyway.”
“And you think that’ll wash with a Diremage? Honestly, Hardin, you really are as stupid as you’re big, aren’t you? He’s a Diremage! A magical vampire hunter from another world! You don’t mess around with someone like that! You’d be better meeting a whole coven of vampires down here than trying to tell fibs to Diremage Xeron!”
The scarred guy, Hardin, shut his mouth but looked reluctant.
Anja turned on them all, her fists on her hips. “What a bunch of babies!” she growled at them. “Call yourselves fighters? I’m going in there, and you’re coming too, and whatever we find, it’ll be less terrifying than the wrath of a Diremage. Come on!”
She took a step into the Underway, and her companions reluctantly followed her. Marcus, who had been watching with fascination, suddenly snapped back into himself. What to do? They were coming down the tunnel toward him, and he only had a moment to act before they saw him.
With a twist of his willpower, he dispelled the table, breaking the Dungeon Meld spell as he did so. He glanced at the two dungeon doors. He couldn’t let this lot disrupt the duelists in the middle of their bladehand run—again, for some reason he couldn’t quite put a finger on, he had the feeling that it would be very bad.
The other dungeon, however, was a different story.
Quickly, Marcus moved the entrance to the Harpy dungeon a little nearer, and shifted the bladehand entrance away, further up the corridor. He couldn’t actually cast a spell on the bladehand entrance to hide it, but instead, he walked over to the entrance, pulled the door closed, and cast his Ultimate Stealth spell on himself, hoping that the spell’s influence would spread to the door as well.
Spell: Ultimate Stealth Level 1
Level Increase: 2%
Progress to next level: 62%
Nice, Marcus thought. His efforts had the desired effect, and he’d got a small level increase as well. As the little fighter team approached, their attention was caught by the entrance to the Harpy chamber.
“What’s this?” said the biggest member of the group. He approached the door, seeming bolder than the others of the group. He was dressed in heavy plate armor over bright mail, and he carried a spear and a round shield, with a longsword at his side. He had a big full-face helmet on his head, with the visor up. A thick, wiry black beard stuck out combatively from the helmet. Anja came up beside him.
“I don’t know, Ben,” she said, and tentatively pushed the door open. The big fighter, Ben, stood beside her while the other three men held back warily, their eyes fixed on the door.
Ben stuck his head through the door. “Seems like a corridor going down to some kind of bigger chamber. You reckon there might be some truth in these rumors of dungeons after all?”
Anja shrugged. “I don’t see why not. Seems more likely than vampires, anyway. I figured that was just a blind for something else. Maybe this is it.”
Ben looked at the others. They huddled together, clearly afraid, glancing back toward the daylight. Ben’s eyes shone with excitement as he spoke to them. “This could be big ticket stuff, you guys!” he enthused. “Haven’t you heard the legends of dungeons?”
“Sure I have,” said the whiny one, a small, sallow, rodent-faced man armed with a black metal morningstar. “I’ve heard nothing good about them. I came here to hunt vampires, not dungeons. I think you’re right, and that is a dungeon. I want nothing to do with it. I’m leaving.”
“Come on, Pike, what about the Diremage, and the payment?” asked Ben incredulously.
“The Diremage can whistle for all I care,” the whiny man called Pike spat. “I can get just as much payment guarding cargo on the docks for a week as was offered for this job, and be a damn sight safer and more comfortable doing so. No,” he said, snapping his gloved fingers in their direction, “that’s for the Diremage, and for you, too, if you’re fool enough to mess with dungeons. I’m off.”
He turned on his heel and marched off, back toward the daylight. The other two took one look at each other, then turned and followed. Big Ben stood next to Anja, seeming torn.
“Well,” said Anja, looking up at him. “What do you say? Decision time.”
Ben frowned. “I want to see. Last I heard, dungeons haven’t existed for years. I’m not sure if there’s ever been one here in Kraken. It could be amazing. Yeah, I want to see. What about you?”
“I’ve come here to do a job,” said Anja, “and I’m going to do it. If Xeron wants news of dungeons, I won’t go back until I’m sure that’s what this is.”
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Ben grinned, his eyes shining. “Let’s do it then!” he said, and jammed the visor of his helmet down over his face. His black beard stuck out from beneath it.
Anja nodded her head and smiled fondly at him. “Thanks, big guy,” she said, clapping him on the arm. “I’d rather have you here with me than that weasel Pike and his whining any day. Guarding cargo on the docks is all he’s good for. Us, we’re made for better things!”
“Yeah, that Pike’s a slimy one,” Ben agreed, his voice muffled through his helmet. “I hope we don't see him again.” He shook his shield and spear. “Come on, let’s do this. I’m getting hungry. Watch out for traps!”
To Marcus’s delight, the two of them stepped into the Harpy dungeon.
This is brilliant, he thought. I needed dungeon runners to fight the dungeons, to provide loot and expend energy within, powering new evolutions. Now, I’ve got two sets of dungeon runners fighting different chambers simultaneously!
Chapter 19
Marcus felt a little concerned about the talk of Diremage Xeron. Anja and Ben had clearly been sent by the Diremage to investigate the rumors of dungeons and try to find out who’d rescued his faerie. What would happen if they fought the dungeon, and reported to the Diremage what they’d discovered?
The different scenarios ran through Marcus’s head as he hurried a little way up the corridor and conjured his dungeon table again. The fighters, Ben and Anja, might run the dungeon and take the loot, and then report to the Diremage. If that happened, it might create a serious problem for Marcus. With confirmation of the dungeon’s existence in the Underway, the Diremage might decide to hire many more people to come and fight there, regaining the grove faerie for himself and carrying out his evil plan.
On the other hand, if Marcus could convince Ben and Anja to transfer their loyalty to him instead, things might go very differently. The Diremage would not get the confirmation he sought, and he would be back to listening for rumors about the dungeons. Those rumors would not be enough to justify hiring an army, and Xeron would be back to square one.
There was, of course, always the possibility that the fighters would be killed in the Harpy chamber, but somehow Marcus didn’t think that was likely. Ben was heavily armed and armored, and confident, and he had said, “Look out for traps!” which suggested he knew something about how dungeons operated. Anja, though smaller and more lightly armored, seemed like a fierce and capable fighter. Together, they would be more than capable of seeing their way through the chamber.
Would he have to kill them?
Marcus forced himself to think about that possibility. He had liked both of them on sight. The big, ballsy, slightly slow Ben, and the fierce, smart, capable-looking Anja. He had no doubt that if he had to, he could beat them both—his talents were magically enhanced, after all—but again, all his instincts rose up against that possibility.
No, he decided suddenly, even if these two refused to join him and went to Xeron with their information, he wouldn’t kill them. He would go and kill Xeron himself instead if he had to, but he would not kill Anja and Ben. He would do everything he could to bring them over to his side.
Leaning over the dungeon table, he activated Dungeon Meld again, and snapped into place with his awareness stretching through his dungeon system. A quick look in on the duelists showed that they had defeated the bladehand, but to Marcus’s surprise a second one had spawned! That was new. The door had opened to the corridor, so the duelists had the option to leave, but they were choosing not to. They had retrieved their nets and were using them to entangle their new enemy again.
Marcus left them and turned his awareness to the Harpy chamber. To his satisfaction, he found that Anja and Ben had navigated the traps in the corridor successfully, and they were now just entering the main chamber.
As he watched them advance warily into the Harpy chamber, Marcus thought that the place looked different. The trees were bigger, the chamber a bit wider, and the flagstone courtyard in the middle looked overgrown with weeds and grass poking out from between the stones.
It’s changed, he thought, the chamber has changed in some subtle ways. And in the other chamber, a second bladehand spawned. That’s never happened before. So the dungeons continue to develop and change even without new ingredients…
Up until now, Marcus had always considered the combat dungeon chambers to be static, but he realized clearly now that this was not in fact the case. Thinking about it, it suddenly seemed obvious. The Grove chamber had always continued to develop, hadn’t it? The trees increased and grew bigger, the waterfall and pool grew deeper, and the grass grew taller. Even the seasons changed within the grove. Why wouldn’t the combat chambers change too? It certainly made sense.
Marcus watched Anja and Ben with interest.
They moved into the chamber carefully, sticking to the sides as they went and keeping a close eye on their surroundings. As they moved closer to the center, shadows formed under the trees and broke off, turning into the sinister forms of five shadow-duelists.
But now, Marcus could see that even the duelists had changed. They weren’t shadows anymore—they had skulls for faces now, and bony hands clasped their swords. They moved with an eerie silence, circling toward the adventurers even as the adventurers moved to put their backs against one of the walls.
There was a rumbling noise. The whole chamber shook, and Marcus watched in amazement as the walls began to contract, closing up the space of the dungeon chamber and pushing the adventurers closer to the grove of trees.
“We’ll have to tackle them head-on,” said Anja tersely. “Let’s get toward the trees and we can have them at our backs instead of the wall.”
“Got it,” said Ben, hefting his spear. “Watch my back.”
Anja dropped a step behind him, holding her sword in both hands. Ben moved swiftly toward the duelists, his shield high and his spear pointing forward, braced against his side.
Together, the pair moved across the chamber quickly, until at the last moment, the skeleton duelists tried to rush them from all sides. Ben’s spear darted in and out of one of them, but that didn’t seem to make any difference. When he slashed the rim of his heavy shield across the face of another, the bone crunched and splinters flew before the duelist crumpled to the ground.
“We have to smash them,” he said to Anja. “This spear won’t be much use!”
He dropped his spear and whipped out his sword, bringing it down on the head of another duelist. Anja traded blows with a third. She drove it away from Ben’s back before taking its sword arm off at the elbow. The duelist made a hissing screech and reached for her throat, but she beheaded it.
The skeleton vanished in a wisp of mist and smoke, and its empty clothes and sword fell to the ground. Anja whirled, slamming a shoulder into another duelist and batting its sword away with her own before kicking it in the knee to knock it off balance.
More were appearing from the trees. They rattled toward the adventurers. Ben finished his opponent with a skull-crushing blow to the head, and Anna took out another the same way.
The two adventurers joined each other again. “You all right?” Anja asked Ben quickly.
“Not a scratch,” the big fighter answered with satisfaction. “You?”
“All good,” Anja said with a grim smile. “These skeletons are pretty satisfying to kill.”
“Yeah,” Ben agreed. “They crunch nicely when you hit them. Come on, let’s get to the trees and take out these enemies at the source.”
“Sounds right to me,” said Anja, hefting her blade. “But you know what they say about dungeons—the enemies come in waves. Watch out for something new happening when we get there.”
Together, they moved steadily toward the trees. The skeletons rushed them again—six new ones came on in pairs. Anja and Ben made short work of them, crunching bones and lopping off arms and legs quickly as the enemies charged. It didn’t take them long to get to the trees.
At the last moment, they spotte
d the ring of runes. “Watch out! That’s going to be a trigger!” said Ben, but at the same moment as he spoke, a skeleton duelist darted between him and Anja, forcing her back toward the trees. Her foot slipped over the line of runes even as Ben warned her.
Three things happened at once.
From the far side of the chamber, a group of skeleton duelists came rushing at Ben. The harpy, triggered by Anja’s foot on the rune circle, appeared from the trees and flew upward on massive, leathery wings, screaming angrily. From the center, something big appeared and charged at Anja. It was low to the ground, about the size of a large dog, clattering as it ran across the flagstones toward Anja.
It was a giant spider made entirely of bones.
“Anja!” yelled Ben as he laid about himself with his shield and sword. For a big guy in steel plate armor, he was fast, but the sheer number of duelists who were suddenly appearing from the trees forced him away from her.
She was focused on the bone spider as it charged her, with its massive, clattering jaw snapping open and shut. Above, the harpy flapped its wings, preparing for a dive.
Big Ben changed his tactics suddenly. He stopped fighting the skeletons who were mobbing him and turned away, charging across to where he’d dropped his spear earlier. He dropped his sword, swept the spear up off the ground, and launched it at the harpy just as the monster dived.
The skeletons pursued him, flinging themselves at him as he snatched his sword up again. The spear soared through the air. It was a mighty throw, and Marcus had never seen anyone throw a spear so accurately over such a distance. The point slammed home—right through the harpy’s chest—sending it blasting backward in a spray of blood. It screamed, then dropped lifeless to the ground.
