Balderdash13 shoots one last searching look down the hallway in front of us, before squatting to examine the pattern.
“It doesn’t look like anything to me.”
"It must be something," I insist. "Why else would it be here?"
"Yeah, you're probably right. I just don't see it." She stands again, squinting at the intricate details.
I walk ahead, lighting the next wall torch to increase our visibility a little bit. Three, four, five feet further down the hallway, the pattern doesn't change. Whatever this clue is that we're looking at must be repeating itself. There seem to be longer deliberate marks, surrounded by shorter, more curling marks. Points mark the design here and there, and while as a whole the decoration feels familiar I can’t quite place what I’m looking at.
I feel silly just staring at the ground, but I’m not sure how else to solve this. We must be reaching the end of the Fire elemental part of this dungeon, and will likely need this bit of info to move forward.
Oh.
Duh.
I close one eye and use my hand to block part of the pattern from view. Suddenly, when I’m looking at only part of it, that part becomes so much clearer. Carvings of flames are woven between bits of the pattern. Identifying which part is fire helps me read the bit that is not fire.
“Elliott.”
“What?” Balderdash13 doesn’t even turn to look at me.
“Elliott. It says Elliott.”
She tilts her head the other way, as if the slight change in angle will help her see it completely differently. “How do you see that?”
I move over to the section she’s staring at and use a hand to cover up some of the flames carved there. “Filter out the fire and what remains is this name. Elliott.”
"Oh ... Awesome. Good job." She stands and brushes the dirt off her knees. "Let's go."
I chuckle a little, grateful for how easy she makes this. “Cool. Let's just keep an eye on the pattern in case it changes."
She nods, readies her weapon and resumes our trek back down the hallway. Soon we reach a short staircase that takes us a few steps down and the hallway opens to another wide, circular chamber. Erinocalypse and SteelFeather stand waiting in the center, beaming at our appearance.
"Took you long enough," Erin says with a grin.
"How long have you been waiting?"
"About a minute," SteelFeather says, looking pointedly at Erinocalypse. "We haven't even had a chance to look around."
"Did you all get Fire Ants too?"
SteelFeather shakes his head. "No. A whole mess of scorpions, though."
"Oh." I wince. "Yeah, that's not better."
"What about your clue?"
"Asher found it. Just the word Elliott."
Yeah, we got ‘puff,’" SteelFeather says.
My brain starts whirring. What do those words have in common? I start looking around the room. There are several unadorned columns around the perimeter, what looks to be another trigger plate near the center, and big double doors at the far end.
I cross to the doors and begin to inspect their locking mechanism.
Across the full width of the doors, at about my chest height is a bar, embedded with dials I'm reminded of those old label makers that have manual dials so you can key in each individual letter. At the moment, each of the dials seems to be keyed randomly, six letters in all. Just to be sure, I grab hold of the bar and try to push and pull, but it doesn't budge in the slightest. There's only room for one word, which likely means that all of our clues combined point to a single solution.
Hopefully.
Erinocalypse follows me. She reaches past me and places her palm on the doors.
"Anything?"
She chews her lip thoughtfully. "Maybe. Maybe a little warmer, like if there was a fire on the other side."
"Well, it's about goddamned time," we hear behind us.
TexBadass and Callidus stumble through the doorway. Neither seem hurt—TexBadass would have healed them immediately—but both show evident rips and wear on their garments and armor.
"And what did you find?" Erinocalypse asks, amused.
"A goddamned lion. A lion. A full grown adult male aggressive goddamned lion."
Callidus still hasn't said a word. I realize TexBadass only has a few, meager DPS options and Callidus, I think, only has his dagger and Stealth. That must have been quite the battle. No wonder the boy seems to be still in shock.
"Glad to see you made it," SteelFeather says kindly, clapping a hand on Callidus's shoulder. "Tanking isn't easy."
"Did you see the word carved into the border? What clue did you get?"
"And let me tell you," TexBadass continues as though I hadn't said anything. "Lions are much bigger than you think. I don't know, maybe I've been misled by cartoons my whole life, but that mother was almost as tall as I am."
"But you killed it. Good job," Balderdash13 says soothingly.
"Barely," he clarifies. "We barely killed it. I don't think any of y'all could have done it." He points an accusing finger at us, as though we had all gotten together and mutually decided to foist that obstacle on them. On him. As though it were personal.
"So, you killed the fearsome beast," I prompt. "And then ... A short time later you noticed a word carved into the tunnel. Like, at the bottom of the wall perhaps."
TexBadass glares at me, but Callidus finally wakes up.
"Smog."
"We think."
"What do you mean, you think?" Erinocalypse asks.
"Well it was all ..." TexBadass waves his hands seemingly randomly. "... All gaudy and frilly and it took a bit for us to even find the goddamned word among all the scrolly stuff."
“But you’re pretty sure it said smog,” I ask Callidus directly.
He nods.
TexBadass begins more complaining, but I tune him out, focusing instead on the three words. Elliott, puff, smog. What six letter word does that point to?
Elliott seems pretty clearly to be a name, puff and smog are …what? Weather patterns? Nouns? Nouns to do with air? I thought we had left the air monsters behind. We’re in the fire section of the dungeon…
I pace absentmindedly back and forth in front of the door. Elliot, puff, smog. Elliot, smog, puff. Puff, Elliott, smog.
None of this is helping.
Erinocalypse has joined me, but she stays rooted in place, staring at the door and fiddling with the letter dials on the security bar.
“Do you have a guess?”
“What? No. Sorry.” She pulls her hands away and laces her fingers together. “Just thinking.”
I nod and resume my pacing.
“What was your word again?” she asks.
“Elliott.”
“Hm. What Elliotts do we know?”
"All I can think of is from E.T."
"Yea." She smirks. "I don't think that's it."
“No, really?”
I spin on my heels and begin pacing the opposite way.
What other Elliotts could that clue be referring to? "T.S. Eliot? No, wait. I think that's spelled with only one t."
She watches me as I pace. The others join us by the door, but leave my pacing path clear.
“What are the words again?” SteelFeather asks.
“Elliott, puff, smog.” I’m saying it like a mantra now, as though repeating the same syllables will somehow transport me to a higher plane of understanding.
“Wait. Sorry. No. Not smog,” Callidus says. “Smaauuuuug.”
He elongates the vowel sound in the middle of the word, but I’m not following. “What?”
“I think I misspoke earlier. Not smog like the stuff suffocating Los Angeles. Smaug. Like the dragon in The Hobbit.”
I stare at him, as my brain works to catch up, resorting what I already know with this new revelation.
“Smaug?” Callidus looks apologetic at the same time he is careful to speak very clearly. “It’s spelled differently. With an A U. Smaug? You know?”
Smaug
, Puff, Elliott.
I laugh and Callidus looks embarrassed.
"Sorry, no. Not you. Sorry. It's just that I'm now going to have 'Puff the Magic Dragon' running through my head."
"Dragon?" Erinocalypse says with a wide smile. "As in, six-letter-word dragon?"
I nod. "Yeah, seems like it. But who is Elliott?"
"Pete's Dragon," SteelFeather says. We all turn to stare at him but he just shrugs. "I've spent a lot of time with my younger siblings. There was a whole old Disney movie thing they went through."
I laugh again and start humming “Puff the Magic Dragon” while Erinocalypse dials the letters across the bar blocking the door. We all hear a loud click and she adjusts her grip on the bar to pull it back from the door.
"Hang on one second," SteelFeather says, putting his hand over hers. "Let's just all remember that we just used the word dragon to unlock this. I don't think we have to think too hard to guess what’s on the other side of this door."
I equip my bow and arrow and step back to let the tanks go ahead of me. Of course there will be a dragon as the boss of this stretch of dungeon. I should have expected it. With a subtle nod to each other, Erinocalypse and TexBadass each throw open one of the doors, and Balderdash13 and SteelFeather step carefully into the dark beyond.
Chapter Forty
The smell of sulfur assaults me through the darkness.
"Be careful." Erinocalypse's whisper carries though the dark room. "I'll light torches when I see them, but until then ..."
Fortunately, some light comes through the open double doors. I debate going back to pull one of the flaming torches off the wall there, but I can't carry a torch and shoot at the same time. Constant vigilance must be the priority.
We creep slowly inside, keeping our backs to the wall, straining our eyes to see anything in the darkness. The light from the doorway only illuminates a few feet directly in front of us. Maybe it's my imagination but the dark seems to extend far beyond where a ceiling would be. Whatever else is in this cavern, it's enormous.
There's the sound of a slow, deliberate movement in the space ahead of us. How are we supposed to attack an enemy we can't see? I move farther down the wall, far enough for it to begin to curve around and for me to not be able to see more than a foot all around me.
I can hear pebbles and stones clattering away from my shuffling feet. None of us are being silent. What is it waiting for?
Still keeping my eyes on the unknown in front of me I crouch down to pick up one of the small stones at my feet. I want to provoke it. I want something to happen. I'm not much of an athlete, but I pull my arm back and throw the stone as far as I can into the darkness.
There’s a light ping when it hits, followed by a small series of bounces as the stone scuttles across the floor.
“Asher! What are you doing?” Erinocalypse hisses.
I hold my breath, listening, praying Erin doesn’t say anything else.
In a flash, everything changes. I hear what sounds like an intake of breath before the plume of fire fifteen feet long appears on the far side of the cavern. The heat is almost unbearable and I squint against the blast. When the roar subsides, the room remains lit; at least three torches mounted on the wall were in the flame's path.
I blink, not hardly willing to believe my own eyes. Not fifty yards away, under a slight rocky overhang and circling around like a cat keeping an eye on its prey, is an enormous dragon. In this light, the scales seem to vacillate between inky black, navy blue and deep indigo purple; the beast is both fantastically beautiful and fearsome. Its pupils seem completely black and I cringe as I feel it looking at me.
Name: Colossal Sapphire Dragon
Level: 33
Description: Dragons hate to be woken up and hate to share their treasure. Watch out for fire from one end and the spiky tail from the other.
Each of us are frozen, unsure where to start, how to approach the monster. If its flame-throwing breath can hit the wall nearly twenty feet away, we could each be dead practically where we stand.
“I’m casting the Bubble of Protection,” Erinocalypse calls to us. “Try not to move farther away from me than you already are.”
Enhancement received: Bubble of Protection
Description: You will sustain -5% damage for the next sixty seconds
I hold my bow, but don’t yet nock an arrow. I watch SteelFeather and adjust and readjust his grip on his sword. I wonder how fire resistant his new shield is.
Callidus disappears, going fully into Stealth mode and I wonder if he’s stupid enough to try to sneak up on and backstab a dragon. Balderdash13 bounces on the balls of her feet, like a boxer getting ready to enter the ring.
Who will be the first to attack? What will the dragon do?
“Asher! We’re waiting on you,” Erinocalypse says.
“Me?” I look at her, holding her protective spell in place, making sure we all stay safe as long as possible.
Okay. Here we go.
I prepare a Water arrow with my Bow of Elements and aim for …
Where should I aim? The dragon doesn’t seem to have an inch of vulnerable surface outside of, literally, its eyes. I imagine the weapon of water I shoot at it will just drip harmlessly over its scales down the side.
The monster continues to pace and circle, sniffing in our direction, and protecting itself by never turning its back and staying under the overhang. It'd be great if I could shoot an arrow right down into its fiery throat, but that seems ... not only unwise, but impossible.
Instead I settle for the creature’s eye, with no idea if this will work, even if I manage to hit it.
I aim.
Fire.
A small hit, not nearly enough to make a dent in the dragon’s health, but better than nothing. I miss its eye but land squarely on its wide snout. I can’t see from this distance, but we can hear the dragon snuffling and expelling whatever water has found its way over its nostrils and lips.
I smile to myself. This might actually be an effective way to distract the dragon, if not actually injure it. But the monster's next action gives me pause. With what is undoubtedly an angry, frustrated roar, the dragon dries off its face by shooting another wall of flame from its mouth, this time toward the opposite side of the cavern, lighting the torches mounted on that wall.
A tortured scream rips through the air, tearing my attention from the dragon. Callidus pops back into view at the far wall, and his entire right side is on fire. TexBadass and Erinocalypse immediately move into action. She casts a water spell I don’t think I’ve seen before, directing her power at putting out the flames. Tex adds his heals to keep the kid alive.
Balderdash13 shoots me a worried look. We can't think about attacking the dragon again while half of our team is so distracted.
So we wait. Those loaded moments when the dragon could destroy us with just a well-aimed breath make my heart pound. I prepare another arrow, but I wait to shoot it. I inch my way back to where Callidus slumps against the ground, hoping we can regroup and come up with a more substantial plan.
"You'll be okay soon," TexBadass says quietly.
And in fact, Callidus does already seem to be healing. His shirt sleeve is completely burned off and his pants and cloak are also charred, but the burn marks on his skin appear to be mending even as I watch.
"Get behind it," Callidus says in a weak voice.
"What's that, son?"
He tries to sit up straighter. "We can get behind it." He points. "You can see it now that these torches are lit; there's a path up to that cliff above the dragon."
I immediately check, following where he points. It looks steep, but not impossible. I wonder if my arrows would be more effective from above.
With a glance at the dragon, to see if I can possibly make it to the path without it noticing, I stand. Before I can take a step, TexBadass stops me.
“Not you.”
“What? It’s got to be either me or Erin. It’s not like SteelFeather is going to dro
p his sword on the thing.”
“That’s true,” he says with his customary drawl. “I’m going.”
“You?” I blink at him, confused. “What? Do you think you’ll have better visibility to heal us from up there?”
“Nope. I got something else in mind.”
Chapter Forty-One
“Hand over the rope,” TexBadass says, palm up waiting.
“Tex. Dude. What are you talking about?” SteelFeather has made his way to our little discussion, probably wondering what is taking us so long.
“The rope,” TexBadass says again. “The one we used to get Erinocalypse out of the ravine. I can use it.”
“Use it for what?” I’m skeptical but nonetheless I delve into my inventory and pull it out. It’s not just any rope, after all. Maybe TexBadass has thought of something I haven’t. I flinch at another roar over my shoulder; the dragon is not letting us out of his sight, even if we don’t seem to be an immediate threat.
“I’m going to get this wrapped around that creature’s neck. Should keep it from breathing fire, don’t you think?”
"I, uh ..." SteelFeather and I exchange a look. "Yeah. Probably. But, I mean, come on. How are you going to do that?"
I hesitate, but finally hand over the coiled rope. As TexBadass examines it, running his hands over the length, he doesn't meet our eyes. He seems to be hiding a smile and I can't tell if he's proud of what he's about to say or embarrassed.
"I may know a thing or two about lassoing."
My laugh comes out as a snort. "No, you don't."
"I might." He meets my smile calmly and winks.
"Come on, Tex. You're ... Dude, you're a dedicated gamer. When is the last time you even left the air conditioning voluntarily?"
“Hey now, there are depths to me you’d never imagine, son.”
“Really.”
Depths of Camlan Page 17
