by DB King
Ships came from all over the world to pay court to the guilds, and to hire guild-trained men for countless purposes. All those ships paid their mooring fee and their trade taxes, and all that coin flowed directly upward, into the coffers of the unimaginably wealthy high nobles. So long as this river of wealth kept flowing steadily upward, the high nobles were unlikely to do anything that would interfere with it.
Marcus smiled and shook his head. Kraken City really was a cesspit, a place where money was king, and if you had it, you could be king as well. If you didn’t have it, you were doomed to spend your life breaking your back to support the lifestyles of those who did. The high nobles were so rich that in the lower levels, no one ever even saw them. Their servants—better dressed and fed than all but the wealthiest merchants—could be seen on the docklands at times, and sometimes the younger son or daughter of some high house might venture down into the lower districts, but mostly they were as remote as the clouds.
Marcus raised his eyes, looking up toward the Tower District. Merchants’ Town climbed up, tier upon tier across the sides of the steep slopes of the island. Above the highest reaches of Merchants’ Town, one could just catch a glimpse of glass and steel towers soaring up toward the clouds from the mountainous island’s flat top. Up there, giant flying machines glided in and out of massive, airborne docks, much as ships flowed in and out of the docklands down below. It was said that the nobles even transported themselves around in small flying machines similar to the giant ones, propelled by mechanisms that were a mystery to those down below.
It was hard to see—a magical barrier separated the high nobles from the lower orders of Kraken City. Much like the Middle Watch kept the Merchants’ Town and the slum districts apart, the High Watch protected the Tower District from even being seen by the mere mortals of the lower areas.
As he looked up, Marcus could catch a glimpse of the sun setting on acres of glass and glinting steel, but the view wavered as if through a haze. He smiled and turned, heading back through Merchants’ Town in the direction of home.
Back in his days at the thieves guild, it had always been seen as the ultimate job for a thief—a robbery on one of the houses of the high nobles. But everyone knew it would never happen. Nobody ever did it, nor was a job ever posted, but the idea remained as an aspiration.
“Perhaps I’ll rob the Tower District one day,” Marcus said under his breath as he began the long walk back toward the Wasteland and the Underway.
He got back in fairly good time, and without incident. This time, he passed through the Middle Watch a different way. He didn’t want any particular group of guards to start recognizing his face. Instead of using a stealth spell, he chose to face the guards and see how they responded. Sure enough, one challenged him as he strode through the courtyard.
“You,” the guard called, getting up from his seat. “Where are you going? What business have you in the slums?”
“My business is my own, good man,” said Marcus, looking at the guard sternly. “There’s no law that I know of to prevent a man going down from Merchants’ Town.”
The guard seemed to consider for a moment. It seemed likely that he was thinking about whether it was worth trying to get a bribe out of Marcus. At the last minute, he seemed to decide against it.
“Oh, do what you will, then,” he grumbled, turning his back and returning to his seat.
Marcus moved through the gate and down the short flight of steps, but as he did so, he heard a gruff voice from behind him. “What was that, guardsman?”
He ducked into the corner of a low doorway and listened closely, peering around the corner of the stonework and looking back to see what was happening. The guardsman’s sergeant had come out of the little watch house and the guardsman had stood to attention.
“Nothing, sir, just a man passing down into the slums, sir,” the guardsman said nervously.
“Oh, yes?” the sergeant said. “And did he state his business?”
“Uh, no, sir,” the guard said, stammering a little. “He… uh… he was very masterful, sir. He seemed a respectable fellow, so I let him go. No law against going down the way, after all…”
“No law, aye, but a certain order from on high, no? A respectably dressed man, was he? Young, with a scar low on one cheek?”
“He… uh… he did have a scar, sir, now you mention it…”
“You damned fool!” the sergeant cursed him. “That’s the very man we’ve been told to watch for! Which way did he go?”
That was enough for Marcus. He cast his stealth enchantment and hurried away down the alleyway, hearing the sergeant’s shouting and stamping as he came down the steps to try to see where Marcus had gone.
A small level increase registered on his stealth spell as the guard withdrew, grumbling, to berate his companion.
Spell: Ultimate Stealth Level 1
Level Increase: 6%
Progress to next level: 68%
There was no chance they would pursue him into the slums, he knew. The city guard did not come down here, and they did not know their way about when they did. It was dangerous to be a guardsman in the slum district.
Quickly, Marcus put distance between himself and the Middle Watch. The slums were quiet, shutters barred and doors bolted against the encroaching night-mists. Who could have given a description of him to the guards? Why were they told to keep an eye out for him and to detain him if they had the chance?
Marcus felt the influence of Diremage Xeron all over this. The man had money and influence, that was for sure, and it made sense that a man in his position would turn to the city watch to keep a lookout for his quarry. Marcus would have to be more careful.
But they knew about my scar, he thought again. A young man, they said, with a scar low down on one cheek. His hand came up involuntarily to touch the scar that ran from below his left ear, up to the middle of his left cheek. Someone has seen me and given a description of me to the city guards.
The thought made him profoundly uncomfortable. This was worse than when he’d had the bounty on his head from the botched thieves guild job! That was anonymity compared to this! The bounty had never given all that much of a description, and had never mentioned his scar, so this was far worse.
He calmed himself as he jogged on through the lanes and filthy avenues of the slums in the gathering darkness. That was just one group of guards. The city guard was far from being one cohesive force—rather, each guard post had its own unit with its own commanders, and there were many, many guard posts in Kraken City. It would be an impossible task to visit every one of them, handing out bribes and descriptions. No, if those guards had been told, it meant that someone—probably the Diremage—had got an idea of the routes Marcus was used to taking through the city.
Well, I’ll be more careful next time, he told himself. My stealth spells are powerful, and I can use them to slip past guards easily enough. Why did I not do that this time? It was a weakness, he supposed—he had been so pleased to feel able to walk around the crowded areas of the city, he had wanted to see if he could feel the same kind of freedom here, passing the quieter parts of the Middle Watch.
Foolish, he thought, though perhaps understandable.
He would be more careful in the future.
It was fully dark now, and the stars twinkled through the twists of mist that always clung to the wasteland. A fat yellow moon hung over the sea off in the distance, illuminating the land with an eerie light and turning the shadows inky black.
Marcus hurried through the ruins and across the boggy ground, keeping his eyes open in case any of the ghostly wights should decide to try their hand against him. Tonight, though, they seemed to be elsewhere. Well, the Wasteland was big enough for them to share. So long as they didn’t bother him, he was happy to let the wights be—for now.
He made his way straight to the ruins that contained his Underway entrance. As he walked, he thought of that strange white figure he had seen the other day. That had not been like any w
ight he’d ever seen before, small and sneaking rather than tall and menacing. He was looking around the ruin to see if there was any sign of it again, but there was not.
Clink. Marcus felt the toe of his boot catch on something. He glanced down. On the ground, a gold chain necklace with an amulet on the end glinted in the moonlight.
Where could this have come from? he thought. Marcus leaned down and snagged the chain with a finger, lifting it up to look at it more closely. The gold was tarnished, the amulet spotted and dull, but when he rubbed the edge of it with his gloved finger, it brightened up. The amulet was flat, shaped like a leaping stag.
It was a beautiful piece of work, and it seemed old. What a strange find! He doubted very much that it belonged to any of the Gutter Gang, and anyway, who would come out here except him and possibly Kairn? He could not imagine the hoary old dwarf wearing a piece as delicate as this.
Well, there was nothing to be done. He considered leaving it, but then changed his mind. No point in attracting attention to this ruin if someone else did happen to come past. It was strange, no doubt, and slightly troubling, for who could have been here? And why?
He looked at it again. It looked as if it hadn’t been worn in years, tarnished and scuffed as it was. What a strange thing!
Pragmatic as always, he shrugged and slipped the golden item into his pocket. He couldn’t explain it, and there was no point hanging around. Whoever had dropped it was not here anymore. He did take a little tour of the ruins, looking for any evidence of another person’s presence—footprints in the wet ground, the scratch of a boot on the flagstones, even a crushed blade of grass rising up from between the stones—but there was nothing.
Strange.
Putting the mystery to one side for now, he entered the Underway.
Chapter 21
When Marcus got back to the Grove chamber, he found Ella and told her everything that had happened since he’d been gone.
“A new dungeon runner team!” she said enthusiastically. “That’s great! With two teams running your dungeons, you’ll be able to build up much bigger reserves of productive energy in the dungeon system, and that will allow you to create even more chambers and keep building your dungeon empire!”
“That’s the idea,” Marcus replied with a smile. “When I conjured my dungeon management table before the adventurers had run the dungeons, there was no new chamber creation option. I think that I must have used all my creative energy in the creation of the Cursed Pestilence dungeon.”
Ella nodded. “That’s how it works. But you’ve gained your elemental water ability, at least, so it’s not a complete loss. What have you done with the Cursed Pestilence dungeon?”
Marcus pointed over toward the Grove chamber’s exit door. “It’s up in my old sleeping area,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to do with it. I wonder if in time I’ll find some other use for it.”
“You may,” said Ella. “The cursed chambers are very powerful, as you discovered, but they are not suitable for general use. Keep it in storage for now. You might find a new use for it someday.”
Marcus nodded.
“Are you ready to try making a new chamber?” she asked excitedly. “Why not conjure your management table now and see what new options are available?”
“I was just about to suggest the same,” he grinned. “Come on, let’s go over to the cliff-face.”
“You know you don’t always have to create the dungeons starting from the cliff-face,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Marcus asked, looking at Ella with interest.
“Well, you could just start one on the ground within the chamber here. A suitable entrance would spawn, based on the terrain.”
Always eager to try new things, Marcus said. “That sounds good. Let’s try it here.”
First, he conjured the dungeon table. The light in the Grove chamber was the pale light of an early summer morning, quite unlike the darkness up above ground. Marcus could never quite understand the relationship between the day and night cycles within the Grove chamber—they seemed to change more based on his needs and his mood, and the kind of energy that was being used, rather than on any kind of regular progression. Now, he was in a creative mood, and the environment in the grove reflected that.
The dungeon management table rose out of the ground, the gleaming black glass of its surface reflecting the pale, pastel colors of the sky above them. Sure enough, at the side of the table, Marcus saw the models of a new corridor and chamber ready and waiting to be placed.
He knew that he could have placed the chambers directly from the table, but instead he decided to do it using his spells. Breathing deeply and centering himself, he took a few steps away from the conjured table and raised a hand over the ground, speaking the dungeon creation spell out loud.
“Crucible initiation!”
The grass in front of him rippled as if it was underwater. It changed and shifted, then, with a rumbling noise from deep below, the turf began to break up. From beneath the ground, as if propelled upward by machinery, a cylindrical building of square sandstone rose up. Grass and earth dropped away from it as it came up out of the ground.
It was about four feet across, an almost perfect cylinder with a tapered top like the top of a knight’s helmet. On the side facing Marcus, there was a low doorway, and through the door, he could see spiral steps winding downward.
“Wow! That’s a new look for the dungeon entrance,” Marcus exclaimed. “I like it!”
He hurried over to the campfire, where he’d stashed the goods that he’d bought in the market specifically for the purpose of creating the dungeon. He laid the treasures out on the ground—the lobster’s claw charm, the rubies, the silver rings, the bronze dagger, and the little bag of stimulant seeds. When he went to put this last item in, Ella stopped him.
“Save some of those,” she advised. “You can plant them in the Grove and see what happens. You might get some interesting plants.”
When he’d put half the seeds away in his pouch and put the rest in the dungeon, he held up the lobster’s claw charm. “What do you think about this?” he asked. “Last time I put something dead into a dungeon—the corpse of a ratman—I got a cursed dungeon. Do you think there’s a risk of that happening again if I put this lobster’s claw in? It’s dead, after all…”
Ella considered for a moment then shook her head. “I don’t think it’s likely,” she said. “There’s a big difference between that and the corpse of the ratman. For a start, the ratman was an evil being already, and the intention of the creature makes a big difference. Also, that’s just the lobster’s carapace, not the animal’s flesh. If you don’t actually put dead flesh in the dungeon, I expect you’d be all right. The chances are you’ll get some kind of lobster-based monster, though.”
Marcus smiled. “That sounds pretty good to me. I’ll go for it.”
On reflection, he decided not to put all his stuff in. He placed the lobster claw charm on its silver chain carefully on the top step, then he scattered a handful of the stimulant seeds. He placed the bronze dagger there too, then lifted his hand over them all.
He had not tried to use his elemental water ability since he’d gained it, but he was pleased to find that despite this, the power was readily available to him. It seemed stronger than it had been before, too. With just a small effort of will, he was able to make a stream of water run from the palm of his hand.
He let it wash over the items, darkening the stone steps. Then, thoughtfully, he walked over to the camp and retrieved a little wooden box of salt he kept there. Bringing this back over, he sprinkled a generous dose of salt onto the puddle of water, then snapped the box closed and put it in his pocket.
Elemental ability: Water
Current Mastery Level: Novice
Level progress: 2%
Progress to Apprentice level: 3%
“What did you add salt for?” Ella asked with interest.
Marcus frowned. “I don’t really know,
it just felt right. There’s a sea connection with this chamber—the lobster claw charm and the silver rings are both things that sailors often carry. A bronze dagger is often favored by the sailors too, now I think of it. I felt like salt water was more appropriate than fresh, for some reason.”
Ella smiled. “You’re getting more practiced at listening to your instincts,” she said. “That’s a very good thing. When creating new dungeons, being guided by instinct is a very useful thing to be able to do. The more you do this, the stronger you’ll find your instincts becoming.”
Marcus held a hand up. “Crucible: Begin Gestation Phase!” he commanded. He’d half expected the little entrance building to retreat back under the earth, but instead a bright light shone out from the entrance for a moment, and when the light retreated, the doorway was bricked up with a layer of red bricks and covered over with a thick growth of dark green ivy.
Dungeon Master: Level 3
Dungeon Chambers: 4
Dungeons Fights: 5
Progress to next chamber: 50%
“Now we wait,” Marcus said.
Marcus spent the time seeing to the Gutter Gang. He discussed the progress of the training with Kairn, who declared himself very pleased with the progress that the gang was making. The new weapons and armor were excellent quality, he said, and when Marcus inspected the little group, they seemed like a cohesive fighting unit rather than the mob they had once been.
They stood straight and presented their weapons, then brought them back into place and saluted.
“I’ve been instilling the importance of proper discipline,” Kairn said, nodding his head knowingly. “They will fight as a unit when the time comes.”
