Tor Pin gave a sympathetic wince and then placed a hand before the glass. He cleared his throat. “I summon now the Gate of Mana.”
Ruckus barked and wagged his tail as the glass began to grow and splinter apart. Low humming filled the air, and the hairs on the back of Dan’s neck prickled as the glass pieces formed into something like a ring. Inside that frame spread a shimmering blackness within which swam tiny slivers of light, reminding Dan of Tarissa’s magic device from the night before.
The scholarly Northerner stepped to the side, looked at something on his map, and nodded. “The shard has successfully entered phase state,” he said.
Richard grinned and gave the thumbs up. “Everyone in!” He grabbed Dan’s shoulder and pulled him forward into the abyssal pool.
***
Dan cringed and clenched his eyes shut, feeling something cool like a wafting breeze on his skin—and then he was standing on stone, not the dead leaves and brambly floor of the forest. He blinked and looked around. The party was surrounded by what looked like metal bricks with a smooth marble floor beneath him. He could hear the gentle sounds of the forest behind him, and as he turned he saw a shimmering disk hovering in the air through which he could see dark trees. “Uh… Huh,” he said vacantly. Dan felt he should say something of substance, but words failed him. He had stepped into a storybook.
Ruckus waddled around, looking perplexed, tail wagging. “This feels… Odd,” he said. “Like home, but not.”
Richard gave a peculiar glance to Ruckus. “I’d hope so, you being a spirit and all. Was your home dimension like this? Can you show us around?”
“I… don’t know. I don’t think so,” said Ruckus. “It’s more a vibrance in the air, like I could jump higher and be stronger here. I think the form of my home wasn’t actually like this place at all.”
“That’s a shame,” said Richard. He reached under his shirt and pulled out his orange spirit lizard. “What about you, Soo? Does this seem familiar at all?”
The small creature muttered something in a voice too low for Dan to make out. Richard nodded and put her back under his shirt. “Well, I guess we’re going forward blind.”
Marit sighed. “Of course. Let’s get everything set up.” She sat down and started pulling implements from her pockets and laying them on the ground. Beside her Tarissa tapped the walls with her fingertips and put her ear to the bricks.
Dan shifted from foot to foot throughout it all, scratching his head. “Sorry, guys,” he said. “I’m really lost here. I know you told me you’d show me as we went, but I’m not entirely certain what I’m going to be able to do. This is all crazy. What’s going on?”
Marit opened her mouth but stopped, glancing toward Tarissa. “Want to explain, President?”
The redheaded girl nodded. “Right. Sorry for not explaining better last night. See, the term ‘dungeon’ is just an artifact of fairy tales. A more appropriate name would be ‘vault,’ but there are so many stories describing dungeons filled with monsters and treasures that it’s become shorthand for what this is.”
“Monsters?” Dan took a step back, casting a wary glance over his shoulder. “Care to elaborate on that?”
“Oh, it’s nothing bad, not right now,” Tarissa said, rolling her eyes. “This would be easier if you hadn’t grown up in the countryside. The ancient mages made little pockets in the Sea of Mana to hold their wealth and secrets. They created keys to get into them, but unless you hold a master key, you can only access a… sort of representation of the actual vault. It has a small amount of the treasure, but it’s also protected by an algorithmic spell that generates traps and other danger.
“The defenses become more sophisticated whenever they’re beaten. When future treasure hunters use a shard intended to access the same vault, they encounter the new measures. Dungeons only a few people know about are easy, while those everyone knows about are really dangerous.”
“I see,” said Dan. “Where do the monsters come into this?”
This time Richard spoke up. “Spirits live in the Sea of Mana, and the ancient mages were the ones who invented Contracting. Some of the spells they use in dungeons are based on the idea of Contracts. They provided some mana or something, I don’t really know how it works, and they hired spiritual muscle to haunt the dungeons when treasure hunters appear.”
Dan looked down at Ruckus. “Is this true? Did you use to do this before we met?”
The spirit dog looked troubled. “I… I’m sorry, I can’t remember. This doesn’t sound familiar, I’m afraid.”
Richard shrugged. “Maybe Ruckus is too young to know anything about it.”
“I doubt that,” the spirit dog muttered, but Richard didn’t seem to hear.
“In any event,” said Tarissa, frowning at her brother’s interruption, “this shard is rare, and most of its difficulty is supposed to come from puzzle-class traps and environmental hazards, not from monsters. It should be pretty safe.”
Dan nodded, relaxing. “Okay, you could have said that in the first place.”
“Would it have made you feel any better?”
He thought about it. “Probably not.”
“All right then.” Tarissa tossed her hair. “Let me formally introduce us. I’m the club president, Marit’s our trap-master, Tor Pin’s the cartographer and Mystic, Richard’s our muscle, and your job is to find ways to be useful. You can start by carrying junk.”
Marit had selected some small tools from the things dumped onto the ground and tied them to her belt. “I’m all set,” she said.
Beside her, Tor Pin and Richard nodded. The Northerner held a paper in one hand and a pen in the other, and Richard had wrapped his left hand with canvas strips.
Marit stepped close to Dan and handed him a dagger. “You’ll probably need this,” she said as she pushed past, picking up the remaining supplies and putting them back into her sack. She nodded. “Let’s go.”
Sighing, Dan followed the rest of the party through the corridor, moving further away from the gateway back to the forest with every step. He felt tense and powerless, but at least everyone else seemed to know what they were doing. He’d just need to trust in their experience to get him safely through the dungeon. Dan hoped he could learn quickly enough to keep himself alive.
Chapter 5
Their first obstacle appeared only a few minutes into their journey: an array of circles carved into the marble of the ground, each inlaid with a ring of sunken half-circles. Dan didn’t see any significance to it, but Marit’s brow furrowed as she bent down to examine the ring.
“It doesn’t seem charged with anything,” she mused, “but I can’t see any mechanical interference; looks like it’s carved right into the floor.”
Dan looked up. “What does that mean?”
“Either it’s actually magical and I’m just not seeing it, or this isn’t the trap itself.” Marit stood up and squinted as she looked down the corridor.
It seemed the same to Dan as the rest of the hallway had been: metallic brick walls inset with ever-burning, sourceless lamps exuding a pale, colorless light.
“Ha!” Marit fished in a pouch at her belt and came up with a handful of sand, fine granules dribbling out of the edges of her fist. She threw it outward, blowing gently to keep it from flying in the face of her teammates, and in the cloud appeared thin beams of light which shimmered as the sand crossed their paths.
Dan looked to the ceiling and saw several discolorations which matched inset dots on the circles below. If he hadn’t been looking for them, he wouldn’t have seen them.
Marit knelt and placed a small stone in front of each of the dots which corresponded to the points on the ceiling. “Move between these,” she said. “Carefully. I don’t know what will happen if you touch one of the beams.” She stood back, watching the movements of her teammates, and helping Tor Pin and Tarissa who each almost stumbled as they moved between the beams.
On the other side, Dan exhaled in relief. “Ho
w many of these are we going to see?”
Tarissa shrugged. “Maybe three or four. This was an obvious one, right in the middle of the hall. Stay in the back, let Marit take the point, and don’t touch the walls. Not all the traps are going to be so easy to spot.”
Marit nodded. “Tor Pin,” she said, “Do you have any ‘Detect’ beads on you?”
Tor Pin flushed, looking ashamed. “I, uh, meant to make one last night, but I forgot. You said we wouldn’t need them when you joined.”
“Maybe not, if everyone was experienced,” said Marit. “But one—” She glanced at Ruckus. “Two of us are new to this. Next time let’s make sure we have what we need.”
“Of course,” said Tor Pin. He opened a pouch and poured six glazed clay beads the size of blackberries onto his hand. The spheres were painted in various colors and stamped with glyphs. “I have two beads of ‘Flare,’ two of ‘Create Food and Water,’ and one of ‘Force Bolt,’” he said. “Good for emergencies.”
Richard grinned. “Don’t worry, Dan, it won’t come to that.”
***
The next hour was largely uneventful. Marit navigated the group through multiple traps, none of which seemed to offer much challenge to her. The party crawled under a contraption which fired darts from the wall, hopped over a pressure-activated pitfall, and moved with slow, creeping footsteps so as not to disturb the statue of a large-shelled crab Marit was certain would come to life if they passed too close.
Dan relaxed as the party continued down the twisting hallway. Occasionally a side passage broke away, but Tor Pin asserted they needed to avoid all them as they were nothing more than decoys. So long as they maintained course they were safe.
Marit froze. She raised a hand in warning and crouched low to the ground.
“What is it?” asked Tarissa in a low voice. She pulled a small knife from her pouch.
“Monsters ahead,” muttered Marit. “Everyone back except Richard.”
The student in question grinned, flexing his hands. “Finally,” he said. “Soo and I have been bored as boulders down here. We could use some danger.”
Marit frowned. “They shouldn’t be too dangerous. Right, Tor Pin?”
The scholarly student examined a section of fine writing on the map he carried. “I don’t think so. Kobolds and winged spirits have been reported, all of which should be easy to dispose of.”
Richard nodded. “Right. Where are they, Marit?”
She pointed ahead. “Movement in the shadows near that doorway to the left.”
Richard walked forward with solid, stomping steps, Soo crawling around his neck and shoulders. An orange-red glow grew from the tiny spirit’s scales and drifted like mist down Richard’s left arm to coalesce around his fist. As the cloud grew brighter and angrier, Richard set off on a run toward the end of the hall, yelling something incomprehensible.
“Follow carefully,” said Marit, and they walked in pursuit. Dan couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary and felt Richard looked silly making so much of a racket.
As Richard passed the noted doorway, a small form darted out and threw itself at the student. Dan opened his mouth to yell a warning, but Richard had already spun one foot, planted the other behind him, and rammed his fist into the creature’s chest. An orange flash lit the corridor as the creature staggered back toward the main group.
Dan yelped and stepped backward. Marit leaned past him and slammed a foot into the shape as it came close, halting its movement and causing it to groan and writhe.
Ruckus barked and wagged his tail in excitement as Dan leaned in, disgusted. “What is that thing?”
It was humanoid with orange, scaly skin and the tail and claws of a lizard. Its face looked like that of a dog, and a thick-bladed knife clattered to the ground next to it. Red flames scoured the creature’s flesh, cracks in its skin shining with light where Marit’s foot had connected. As Dan watched, the monster’s body faded, leaving nothing behind.
“That’s a kobold,” said Tarissa. “Lizardfolk spirits standard to low-level dungeons. Nothing too dangerous as long as you know where they are.”
Dan felt sick. They had just killed a creature who could think. A spirit like Ruckus.
Tor Pin gave an apologetic smile. “Don’t worry, we didn’t really kill it. It will go back to wherever it lives in the Sea of Mana. It was already paid for its work here, so we gave it a holiday.”
“A painful one,” said Dan. He glanced down at Ruckus. “How do you… feel about all this?”
The dog spirit snorted. “They’re the ones who took the job,” he said. “And unlike us, you humans can’t regenerate. Better them than you.”
“I guess.” Dan looked down the corridor. Two more bursts of light flared up around Richard’s spinning and stomping form, though he was too far away for Dan to make out the actual encounter. When he stopped, Richard yelled back at them.
“I guess it’s safe to continue,” said Marit. She seemed to relax but didn’t sheath her weapon.
“And the treasure chamber should be just ahead,” said Tor Pin. He sounded relieved.
The spiritual fire had faded from Richard’s hands by the time he rejoined the group. He grinned, sweat dripping from his face and blood staining the right leg of his pants. “I haven’t had a good fight in a while,” he said. “One of them clawed me, but it’s not bad. You guys owe me dinner though.”
Marit rolled her eyes. “Then you owe me breakfast and lunch for a week for all the work I’ve done today.”
“The treasure should be enough for everyone,” said Tarissa. She took the lead and stood in front of a towering silver door at the hallway’s end.
Dan looked up at the door, impressed. Rows of intricate glyphs covered its surface and deep lines connected various groupings into what he assumed were words. He wondered if he would learn to read runes in his studies.
Tarissa pushed on the door, straining, but it didn’t move until Richard and Marit joined in, after which a deep and guttural grinding filled the air.
The treasure room lay beyond.
***
Boots and paws tapped on the floor as the party spread out, looking around in awe and greed. The cube stretched an easy hundred feet in every direction, steely bricks rising high, met at the floor by stone tiles different from the marble of the hallway. They looked like polished granite at first glance, but there was a subtle motion to the grain underfoot, like glass fitted over a sandy riverbed. Dan found it disconcerting. Glyph-spotted metal rods sprouted from the floor in a way that suggested guideposts. Occasional square inlays outlined broad sections of stone tile, though Dan couldn’t make out any symmetry or pattern to them.
The main attraction was the pedestal in the room’s center. As the party drew close Dan saw a metal box about half the size of a traveling chest resting on a short pillar of the same stone as the floor. A single sourceless light shone from the ceiling to illuminate it.
Marit took a long look at the front of the chest before leaning in and tapping at the seam with a dagger. She turned to the group, nodded, and threw open the lid.
Dan gasped as the metal composition of the chest turned to sparkling crystal and then dissipated, leaving several pouches of leather and two twine-tied scrolls suspended above the pedestal. Tarissa strode forward and took the things as if plucking falling leaves from the air. She sat on the pedestal’s edge and sorted out the contents of the pouches on her lap. The scrolls she handed to Tor Pin who unfurled and studied them with enthusiasm.
Silver coins a little smaller than the common denomination comprised the rest of the treasure, each stamped with a single glyph which gleamed when viewed head-on. There were six for each human party member and one left over. Tarissa pocketed the final coin, telling Dan it would go toward club expenses.
The scrolls were algorithms for condensing Mystic mana into spell beads, though they were ones Tor Pin already possessed. Marit took them and agreed to sell them for the club’s profit at a bookstore in O
rmuil.
Dan sat on the ground, Ruckus at his back, after he had received his coins. He didn’t know their value in relation to true silver, but he knew it was more money than he had ever held in his hands. “Why don’t more people do this?” he asked in a subdued voice.
“Because it’s dangerous, and a gamble.”
Dan turned. Marit stood behind him.
“We got lucky,” she continued. “And most of the time you won’t find a shard this good unless you’re rich enough to buy it from a reliable source.”
“Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?” asked Dan. “Of the treasure, I mean?”
“No,” interjected Tarissa. “If you do it safely, it’s usually a long-term game. You buy the rarest shards and hire competent adventurers to travel into them. You have a pretty narrow idea of what kind of treasure’s inside, so you make about a five percent margin of profit if you’re smart. For someone with a lot of money, it’s a safe investment.”
“But it’s that much harder for adventurers like us to succeed,” said Marit. “Every time a shard is used, the rest of the set become more dangerous, but not necessarily more profitable. And you rely on people who sell them to report sales in a country-wide network to estimate the risk associated with each dungeon.
“If a half-dozen of the same type of shard we used had been sold without record, we could have died today, and no one would ever know, and more people would die after us.”
Dan’s skin crawled. While he had been warned of the danger ahead of time, hearing the specifics made it seem real. “Then why are all of you doing it?” he asked. “I mean, I got to the clubs late, but all of you had other choices for years. Why do it at all?”
Tarissa sighed. “I had a really good shard,” she said. “It was one of the few things our mom left us before she went off and never came back. I was going to sell it, but Richard convinced me to wait until we had a team good enough to beat it for sure. We’ve been using safer shards up until now, and even those were a lot more profitable than other clubs, but…” She gestured toward Richard. “My brother’s in a ton of debt, and without this money there’s no way he could have stayed in the University.”
The Black Librarian Archives Page 4
