by Annie Bellet
Dungeon Crawl
The Twenty-Sided Sorceress: Book Eight
Annie Bellet
Copyright 2017, Annie Bellet
All rights reserved. Published by Doomed Muse Press.
This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to [email protected].
Cover designed by Ravven (www.ravven.com)
Formatting by Polgarus Studio (www.polgarusstudio.com)
Electronic edition, 2017
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Dedicated to the best DnD group: Andrew, Hank, Vandy, Ursula, Brian, and Jeremy.
It looks good to me, guys!
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Alek
Chapter Eight
Alek
Chapter Nine
Alek
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Also by Annie Bellet
About the Author:
Pwned Comics and Games had its grand opening party on a balmy day at the end of August. The finishing touches weren’t on my shop yet, a few odds and ends left to do like painting the baseboards in the new office area I’d created behind the now-built-in counters and cases. But it was home, renewed.
Home with better lighting, a kick-ass wireless network, surround sound, and bamboo flooring. Between what Ciaran and Brie had kicked in and the money I’d practically throttled out of my insurance company from the fire, we’d managed to build a suite of shops on the block that would do Wylde, Idaho proud. I’d heard from a couple of other shops on the blocks around us that they were planning to copy the dark purple awnings and faux-stone facing.
Most of a year gone since the town had come under siege by my evil ex. Sometimes it felt like a lifetime ago. Sometimes like only a minute. Trauma is like that, I guess. The town rebounded okay, and so had I.
Most days.
This was one of the good days. The shop was open for business, lots of people, human and shifter alike, dropped in. Ciaran had re-opened his shop a few weeks prior, but with all my custom lighting I’d had to wait a little before my part was ready. Plus I’d sunk more time into the new digs upstairs, because living in a trailer with a giant tiger wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world. Turns out Alek and I like a little space.
Brie’s bakery had been operating out of a temporary location, but all was ready for her own opening in two days. She had proper stone counters and ovens that had made the gold-loving Leprechaun blink when he saw the receipts.
The sun had dropped behind the building and only the hum of the air conditioner broke the quiet as I shut down the computer at the counter. Closing time. After locking the front door, I threaded my way through the racks of comics toward the steps leading up. That new home smell still clung to the space. Fresh paint fumes lingered in the air. I was going to have to spill some Mountain Dew on my new, pristine, and environmentally friendly floors.
I shook my head at myself. Fat chance I could bring myself to do that. The second story was all gaming rooms now, including a dedicated LAN space. Which is where the true opening party was taking place, with the twins, Ezee and Levi, already waiting for me. It was a new season of Diablo III and my Demon Hunter wasn’t going to level herself.
“I ordered pizza,” said the love my life in his growly Russian accent. Alek was sitting on the top step but he stood up as I climbed toward him.
“You know how to win our hearts,” I said, poking him in his ridiculously hard belly.
“You will game all night and forget to eat,” Alek said, his ice-blue eyes narrowing. The light at the top of the steps turned his white-blond hair into a golden halo.
“It’s the gamer diet,” I said, leaning into him. “How else will we keep our perfect physiques?”
“Kettlebells?” Alek said.
His voice rumbled his chest and I sighed, breathing deep of his sweet and spice scent. He had a way of making everything okay. He’d proven himself pretty handy with electrical wiring and tile grouting, too.
“Not today, torturer. Tonight, we game!” He had me doing all kinds of crazy exercises and while I saw the point after wishing countless times in the last couple years that I was in better shape, there was only so much compromise a girl could make. Diablo before bros, right? “Sure you don’t want to join us?”
“I will wait for pizza,” he said. I felt his muscles ripple under his teeshirt as he shook his head.
“Offer is always open.” I pulled away from him and squeezed past him up to the landing. Second door on the right, straight on till morning.
The LAN room had six custom-built gaming computers arrayed on a half-circle table. Because this was my joint, I’d built them to my own specs, putting in the chairs I liked best, using the mice and keyboards I favored. Nobody had complained, but given how good I was with a fireball and how half the town, the non-human half anyway, knows it, I figured nobody would dare. At the moment the table faced away from the door, because I wanted people to be able to come in and check out the action, but I was thinking about switching it. Sitting with my back to a door made me twitchy these days. Just another thing I’d be testing out tonight.
The Chapowitz twins, Ezee and Levi, were already upstairs, having escaped to make sure everything was loaded and the profiles all set up before we commenced the true breaking in of our new gamer haven. Levi had his Mohawk pulled into a tight knot on his head, I assumed to keep it off his neck in the heat, and was already in the loading screen, clearly impatient to get started. Ezee had shed his custom suit in favor of a more summer-friendly XKCD teeshirt that said “Science. It works, bitches” on it and khaki shorts, and was leaning back in his chair, sipping a cold Dr. Pepper.
“Everything set?” I asked Ezee as I slid into my chair. “I see you found the soda.” I could tell his can was fresh out of the mini-fridge from the condensation beading around his fingers and threatening to drip onto my brand new floors. Guess things couldn’t and wouldn’t stay pristine forever.
“Ready when you are. Let’s do this.” Ezee saluted me with the soda.
“First one to die has to eat a ghost pepper,” Levi said. We were playing hardcore mode, of course, which meant that any death was permanent and if you died you had to start a new character.
“That’s between you two. I ain’t part of that bet, nope. Leave me out of it.” I tugged my braid over my shoulder and then cracked my knuckles. Time to click click click some monsters into oblivion and save the world.
Unlike saving the world for realsies, this was low stress, low impact. Best part about video games was even though we were playing hardcore mode, none of the deaths would really be forever.
None of us brought up the missing fourth party member. None of us had to. There was a Harper-sized hole
in everything we did, but until she was ready to get back in touch, until she was ready to come home… well. There wasn’t much to be done now but eat, sleep, game, repeat.
We were leveling by running bounties in Act One and managing not to totally wipe out when I heard Alek coming up the steps. I’d wondered what was taking pizza so long. If this slaughter kept up we’d be taking a death break in a minute anyway.
“Stop spamming your AOE like that, Levi.” Frustration made Ezee’s voice crack.
“Zomg, lag,” I said. The game wasn’t without its flaws and these were brand new untested computer rigs, after all.
“I’m doing damage!” Levi retorted.
“Yeah, damage to our video cards.”
“It’s nice to see that some things never change,” a woman’s voice said from where the door was behind me.
I let my Demon Hunter perish as I spun around. Harper stood in the doorway with a lopsided grin, her green eyes betraying her uncertainty as she hesitated.
“Furball!” I practically levitated across the space to hug her. At the last second I paused, realizing she might not want to be mobbed by a sweating, manic woman she hadn’t seen in almost a year.
“Hey you,” she said, stepping into me, reaching across the distance. She was just as sweaty and neither of us cared as I danced her around in a tiny circle.
Ezee and Levi joined in, all of us talking at once.
“We saw your crazy game at the qualifier.”
“I missed you so freaking much.”
“Did you come straight in from the airport?”
“I just came from the airport. Pizza is here, Alek said he’ll put it in the tabletop room.”
“Guys,” I said as I pushed apart the hug mob. “Give her a minute.”
“Sure, yeah.”
“We’re dead anyway. Ezee died first. Ghost pepper before or after pizza?”
“Jade died first, so it doesn’t count.”
“Wait, who is eating a ghost pepper?” Harper looked around as Ezee pointed at me and Levi pointed at Ezee.
“Not happening,” I said.
“Pizza,” Alek said over Harper’s head as he materialized in the doorway. “Ghost free.”
“You got a place to stay?” Ezee asked, then looked like he wanted to kick himself for reminding Harper that her home had been destroyed.
She smiled at him as though to say, hey, it’s okay, and shook her head. “I’ll figure it out.”
“We have a guest room now,” I said. “You are welcome as long as you want.”
“A guest room? Wow, you are like a real adult,” Harper said. “I left my bag downstairs.”
“We’ll have to give you a tour of the new shop,” Levi said. “Jade made it awesomer.”
“I missed a lot,” Harper said, looking around.
“Not that much. Been pretty quiet,” I said. “Other than the daily construction, that wasn’t quiet, obviously.” I wanted to kick myself for the awkwardness that had crept over me.
“And that whole thing with Jade and Bigfoot,” Levi added, making me want to kick him.
“Bigfoot? What?” Harper looked at me.
Universe save me. I wasn’t going into that story standing here half inside the LAN room. Nope.
“You both go eat pizza, I’ll run Harper up to the apartment and let her put stuff down, then we can do the catching-up thing.” I shooed everyone into the hall.
At the bottom of the stairs, Harper hesitated again as she lifted her bag up and turned back to me.
“You sure it’s okay if I stay with you?” she asked.
“Harper,” I said, taking her shoulders in my hands and tugging her closer. She seemed thinner under my fingers, the bones of her shoulders more pronounced. “You are family. I told you that you’d always have a spot at the table. That hasn’t changed. That’ll never change.”
Her eyes looked less haunted than they had when she’d left on that wintry night months ago, but her face was more lined than it had been and shadows still lurked within the green depths of her irises. She’d lost more than most of us to Samir’s evil plans. We were kin now in that way, too. Samir had cost both of us our families and our homes.
“I’m sorry I didn’t respond to your emails,” she said softly. “I had to figure shit out.”
“Did you?”
“Kinda. I learned that shit happens. I guess I could have bought a bumper sticker instead, but eh. Gotta do it the hard way, right?” She grinned and it looked almost feral in the dim light from the stairs.
“I tried to run,” she added, “But I figured out that if you’re running from something, it just follows you.”
I smiled back at her, not saying that I could have told her that. I’d learned about running away from trouble the hard way. So many had paid for my mistakes, including my best friend.
Harper had changed, I imagined, in ways that none of us understood yet. But it didn’t matter. What I’d said stood. She was family and she was home. I pulled her into another hug and her arms came around me, squeezing with almost painful strength.
“Welcome home, furball,” I murmured.
The dream is always the same. I am never alone, Wolf walks beside me, always growling low as though some threat will spring out. The house I walk through is one my waking self has never seen, but my dream-self knows it in that oddly strange-but-familiar way dream places are.
Samir is always there as well. Lurking. Sometimes just a flash of golden eyes that disappear through a doorway before I can catch his gaze. Sometimes he’s a dark figure in a long hallway, silhouetted against the dim light from a distant room. Always gone before I can reach him. He never speaks.
Until tonight.
“Not the calm, but the eye,” he whispers, his voice familiar as it crawls under my skin and inside my head. “The center cannot hold.”
I woke up sweating, clutching my twenty-sided die talisman in both hands, a sob dying in my throat. Beside me, Alek woke also, his body tense, alert to whatever had brought me sitting bolt upright.
“Just a dream,” I said. I felt around in the near dark until my hand closed on the hilt of Alpha and Omega, the magical knife the vampire known as the Archivist had given me when I was fighting Samir.
Alek turned on the lamp on his side of the bed. One of the upsides of having my old place burn down was the new apartment was much larger. Large enough to have a guest room, and a bedroom that could fit a king-size bed. That’s important when your boyfriend is a six and a half foot tiger shifter.
“Thanks,” I said, knowing Alek didn’t need the light and had done that for my benefit.
The knife could destroy anything, alive or not. Except, apparently, sorcerers. It had reduced Samir down to a hard little gem, like a single drop of blood trapped inside a diamond or ruby. I didn’t know if Samir could regenerate from that, but he technically wasn’t dead until another sorcerer, such as myself, swallowed that final drop of heart’s blood and took his memories and power.
Not something I was ready to do for a million reasons. The biggest being that it would apparently break one of the seals holding back ancient magics and creatures from the world and bring about a magical apocalypse.
Hence the dagger ritual I performed every morning. Or, like now, whenever I awoke freaking out about a damn dream.
I carefully unsheathed the dagger and pressed it against the tiny, glinting red gem that was set in my talisman right where the one would be on the die. Critical fail was a pretty accurate storage place for Samir, on so very many levels. The gem flickered with dim red light and then went dark and quiet again.
Not today, asshole.
“The dream again?” Alek rubbed my thigh through the thin sheet, his ice-blue eyes pale and concerned in the wan light from the little bedside lamp.
Nodding, I re-sheathed the dagger and put it back on the nightstand. I looked over at the clock. Just past five in the morning.
“Guess I might as well go make some breakfast,” I said. I wasn�
��t getting back to sleep. “Maybe I’ll go crazy since Harper is back and make bacon and waffles.”
Alek pulled me into his warm arms and nuzzled my hair. “I have another suggestion.”
His hands slipped under my teeshirt and made it clear what his suggestion entailed. Sometimes Alek’s perceptiveness and uncanny ability to read body language was annoying as hell. Sometimes there were definite benefits to having a lover and partner to whom nonverbal communication was totally normal.
“The gentleman wins,” I said, turning my head to kiss him. The nebulous foreboding of the dream faded away as Alek reminded me of what mattered. Love. Family. And a really big bed.
“Since nobody wanted to live in Peggy’s house after what happened, the town bought it. They’re going to tear it down and make a memorial park, but now nobody can agree in the town meetings about who to memorialize and how, so it’s just sitting condemned.” I poured myself another mug of tea and sat back down at the table. “And that’s all the Wylde news that’s fit to print, I guess.”
We’d been trying to make conversation but it felt like every topic at breakfast was a reminder of what had changed, what had been lost. Peggy, our former librarian and a witch who had been spying for Samir before she was killed by him last winter, wasn’t exactly a safe topic, but it was pretty much the only news going on in town right now.
“I like the tile you picked for the bathroom,” Harper said around a mouthful of bacon.
“Thanks,” I said. “I didn’t even know you could get custom tile prints. I thought the D&D dice thing might be too repetitive, but it seems to work.” The tiles with their little polyhedral prints made me happy every time I went in there. Alek had shrugged and given no opinion on how we decorated the new place beyond “not too much pink, yes?” so I got to make all the decisions.
