by Nick Harrow
“But we have a dark elf of our own,” I said with a wink to Kezakazek. “You know their secrets, so we shouldn’t have any trouble taking them out.”
The sorceress wrinkled her nose at my words, and her lips twisted into a frown.
“My people are not as similar to one another as our appearances would suggest,” Kezakazek said. “And, to be honest, my experience with drow outside my immediate family has not been good. We were a powerful house once, but our enemies nearly destroyed us.”
“That’s why you became a raider?” Zillah asked.
Kezakazek fidgeted and shifted her gaze to the floor. She shuffled her feet against the stone beneath them for a few moments, then let out a sigh.
“My family was once quite powerful,” she said. “But we were betrayed, and I am the sole surviving heir to our territory and titles. I became a raider to gather enough wealth and power to go back and kick the shit out of the people who ruined my life and take back what’s mine by right of law and blood.”
Well, that was something. I’d known Kezakazek was on a personal quest for revenge, but I had no idea that her family had been some kind of nobility.
“Titles and territory?” Zillah asked, her eyes wide. “Were you a queen?”
“No,” Kezakazek said, in a tone that told us she was both amused and annoyed at the scorpion queen’s leap of logic.
“A princess?” Zillah asked.
The sorceress didn’t answer, but her cheeks flushed the color of ripened plums.
“In theory,” she said at last. “But there is a reward on my head, so I’d just as soon we keep that to ourselves. Unless you want to deal with drow bounty hunters.”
“We definitely do not want to add that to our list of problems,” I said. I cast a meaningful glance at each of the guardians. “Your secret is safe with us.”
“Back to the question at hand,” Nephket said. “What should we do about these drow?”
All eyes were on me as I mulled over my decision. The wahket had already proved they could handle skeletons and zombies. I was confident we could take out a dungeon lord together.
But drow were another bundle of shit-eating poisonous parasitic worms. Kezakazek had almost taken me down with sheer determination. Five soldiers of her kind, trained and ready for battle, could be a real problem. And if this dungeon lord was allied with other dark elves, we might be in way over my head.
But taking Kezakazek’s advice and turning my back on these jackasses wasn’t an option. If I left these enemies at my back door, they’d be battering it down far too soon.
No, I had to kill them. And I had a sudden inspiration for how to do it.
“I’m not walking away from this fight,” I said. “We’ll kill the drow. Then we’ll go into the dungeon they’re guarding and take its dungeon lord’s head off.”
“The wahket—” Nephket started, but I cut her off.
“I have a plan. A good one,” I said. “But it’s going to take me a little time to set up. Zillah stay here with the scorpions. If anything finds this passage, you let me know. Otherwise, wait for my word.”
“Sure,” she said. “You want me to kill anything that comes by?”
“Only if you have to,” I said. “There’ll be plenty of killing soon, but only when the time is right.”
“What are we going to do?” Nephket asked as we headed back toward my dungeon’s core.
“Something messy,” I said. As my plan solidified in my thoughts, I felt Rathokhetra’s approval for my brutal strategy.
Good. Hopefully that meant it would work.
Chapter 5: Murder Chute
“THE PROBLEM WITH MY people is that they’re very sneaky,” Kezakazek advised me as we headed back toward my dungeon. She’d spilled out a steady stream of drow lore during our trek home. “Insanely sneaky. Even goblins, and everyone will tell you that goblins are sneaky little thieves of the worst sort, think we’re too sneaky for our own good.”
“So far, you’ve told me that drow are sneaky magicians who secretly plot to conquer all of reality so your creepy Dreamspinner gods can take over,” I said. “That’s good information to have, but it doesn’t tell me the one thing I really need to know.”
“Which is?” she asked me.
“How to fucking kill them,” I said.
“We bleed,” Kezakazek said. “So stabbing works pretty good. Arrows, spears, swords, and axes are all pretty effective. Fire’s good, too. We’re tricky, but we aren’t the sturdiest warriors. If you can catch us, you can kill us.”
All of which lined up with the plan I had in mind even if it was going to cost me some ka.
Twenty yards away from my dungeon, I stopped and pulled up the Tablet of Engineering. I widened the section of the dungeon passage we stood in, lowered its floor about thirty feet, and created a ramp from our lower position to the higher section of the tunnel that led into the dungeon proper.
“Nephket and Kezakazek, take the wahket back to the dungeon.” I said. Before they could protest, I raised both hands. “There’ll be work for all of you, but I have to set this up. Scoot.”
Kezakazek grumbled but headed up the ramp with an extra-angry bounce to her step. I don’t know if it was a function of being my guardian or if that was her natural attitude, but if there was someone who needed to be hit with an acid sphere, she was on it. Despite my assurances, I knew she was afraid I’d just benched her.
Nephket swatted me with her tail as she walked by, and I returned the favor with a quick slap on her ass. We exchanged grins, and then she herded the grumbling cat women up the ramp and into the dungeon. None of them wanted to miss this fight, no matter how dangerous it might be.
“Don’t worry,” I said to myself. “There’ll be enough blood for all of you to spill.”
With the wahket out of my trick passage, I banished the ramp and reduced the ambient light from the dungeon’s ceiling until the upper opening was all but invisible. Hopefully, anyone who came this way would miss the upper passage and follow the lower tunnel I was about to create.
The new passageway narrowed from a ten-foot corridor to a five-foot path with a low ceiling. I looped the tunnel back up toward my dungeon and then threw in a couple of ninety-degree turns just before I connected it to my dungeon’s entry passage.
I cracked my knuckles and grinned wickedly. Now it was time for the fun part.
I walked up to the ninety-degree turn that connected the new passage to my dungeon. I opened the Tablet of Engineering and stuck a ram trap on the corner’s southern-facing wall. Anyone who got within a couple feet of that trap would be shoved ten feet straight south into a sharp corner that mirrored the turn to the north.
The trap was considered an encounter, but because it didn’t cause any damage, it was only an average threat. At my dungeon’s level, that trap cost me six ka. Not bad for the first piece of my murder chute.
For my second dirty trick, I added a pit trap in the southern corner. Because it was separate from the ram trap, this too was just an average encounter for a third-level dungeon, and it cost me another six ka. After the spiritual energy had drained out of my core, I was left with a five-foot-square section of floor that would drop anyone stupid enough to step on it into a cleverly concealed pit that was ten feet deep.
For my final evil twist, I placed a spike trap on a wall at the bottom of the new pit. Because its trigger wasn’t connected to the ram or the pit trap itself, this too was considered a single average encounter. I coughed up six more ka and installed the last piece of my diabolical trap.
The murder chute was complete, and I still had seven ka in reserve just in case I needed to incarnate.
I made my way to my burial chamber, where I found Kezakazek, Nephket, and the rest of the wahket waiting for me.
“All right, step one is complete,” I said. “Come with me. You’re gonna love this.”
We followed the winding passage that led from the tunnel north of the burial chamber around to the raised area of the
hall of statues near my dungeon’s main entrance. We didn’t go that far, though, because I didn’t need the wahket to trigger the statue trap.
I fashioned a new narrow passage that connected the raised tunnel to a small room directly above the corner where I’d installed the three traps. The room I’d created was a twenty-foot square with a low wall around a ten-foot-square hole in the center of its floor.
“Gather round, kids,” I said. I motioned for the wahket to form up around the perimeter of the hole in the room’s floor. “With any luck, the drow are going to show up right down there. When you get the signal, shoot them with your crossbows. If you run out of bolts, throw your spears at them. If they still aren’t dead, spit on them and shout bad words. Nephket, keep their energy up, and Kezakazek, keep chucking those acid balls of yours until everything down there stops moving.”
“What’s the signal?” Kezakazek asked.
“You’ll know it when you see it,” I assured her. “It’s time to get this party started. Get your crossbows and your bolts. I know there aren’t enough bows to go around, but those of you who don’t have them can hold the bolt cases and help your sisters reload. You’ve got this.”
I hoped, anyway.
With my people on this end settled, I stationed myself on the north side of the murder chute. I wanted to see my contraption do its job, and I wanted to be close at hand in case something went wrong and I had to step in and deal with this shit personally.
I reached out to Pinchy and had her tweak Zillah’s earlobe to get the scorpion queen’s attention.
“What?” my guardian asked in my thoughts.
“All right, it’s time,” I said.
I laid out what I needed Zillah to do and gave her a clear image of the forked tunnel I’d created. There was no room for error here, and if she misunderstood what I needed from her, she might end up dead.
“Got it,” she said after a few seconds. “You’re pretty smart for a dungeon lord.”
“Thanks. You’re not so bad for a scorpion queen, either,” I shot back. “Get moving.”
“I’m the best fucking scorpion queen,” she snarked. Then she stepped out of the shadows she’d crouched in beyond the drow camp and revealed herself to my enemy’s guardians. She also opened her mind to me. and let me ride along for the show.
The dark elves were seated around a small fire, and their jaws dropped open when Zillah appeared from the darkness. None of them moved. They didn’t even reach for their weapons.
I understood that. If a mostly naked scorpion queen presented herself to me, I’d probably lock up for a couple of seconds until my brain caught up to my dick.
“Hey,” Zillah said. She stretched her arms over her head and let out an exaggerated yawn. “You guys looking to party?”
One of the drow—I guessed he was the sergeant because he had a super-fancy helmet with bat wings flared from its sides—jumped up from the stone he’d been sitting on. He barked out a few syllables in an ugly language I didn’t understand, then drew a pair of shortswords from the scabbards on his back.
One of the soldiers scrambled away from the fire and snatched something out of the shadows. He raised it overhead, and I realized it was a black cage with a wide door on the front. The soldier flung the cage wide, and a black shadow burst free from the iron bars and winged its way into the darkness.
“Shit,” I cursed. “That can’t be good.”
But before I had any more time to worry about what they’d unleashed, the drow burst into action.
The three soldiers still around the fire rushed toward Zillah, raised small crossbows in their left hands, and unleashed a flurry of pint-sized quarrels that streaked through the air.
My guardian threw herself out of the missiles’ paths, and the bolts bounced off the stone behind her. Their tips sheared off on impact with the cavern’s wall, and the barbed metal heads bounced onto the floor at the scorpion queen’s feet. Sticky black fluid oozed away from the metal, and I felt a twinge of fear in Zillah’s thoughts.
“Well, fuck.” She turned and scampered back toward my dungeon with the dark elves in pursuit. “I did not expect those tiny poison crossbows. I’ll just make a mental note that these fuckers really are sneaky.”
Zillah was faster than the dark elves, but she took pains not to get too far ahead of them. The plan was to have them follow her back to the dungeon, not for them to get lost in the Great Below. I needed them dead, and I needed them dead now.
“Coming in hot,” Zillah thought to me as she scrambled through the final length of dungeon corridor before she hit the murder chute.
More quarrels ricocheted off the walls around the scorpion queen, and she twisted and dodged like a dervish to avoid them. The drow had picked up their pace, and the gap between my guardian and their swords had shrunk to an uncomfortably narrow margin.
“When you get to the twisty part of the corridor, you need to jump,” I reminded Zillah, and gave her a clear image of the section I’d trapped. If she stumbled or tripped and triggered the ram, the whole plan would come apart and she’d be as good as dead.
“I understand,” she panted and then all her concentration was on staying alive.
Speaking of survival, I needed to warn Nephket about the bows.
“Tell the wahket to be careful,” I thought to her. “The drow have poison hand crossbows, and if anyone gets hit, I’m not sure what will happen.”
“We’ll stick as close to cover as we can,” she said. “Hopefully, even if we fire blind, the sheer number of attacks will be enough to finish them.”
That’s what I hoped, too, but as the rattle of Zillah’s feet on the stone drew ever nearer, I wasn’t sure that would be the case.
The scorpion queen burst around the corner ahead of me and flung herself across the pit. Her chitinous rear legs briefly touched the wall to the left of the ram trap, and then she sprang away and vanished around the corner.
The drow appeared right behind her. My eyes widened and my pulse pounded as I waited for them to stumble into the first trap.
In the split second before the sergeant’s foot would have landed on the trap’s trigger, he froze in place and flung his left arm out to the side to block his warriors from advancing any farther. The other drow skidded to a stop behind their leader, bows and blades held ready to face any threat.
I took a moment to eyeball the little bastards to get a better idea of what we were up against.
<<<>>>
Drow Soldier
Medium humanoid (elf), neutral evil
Armor Class: 15 (Chain Shirt)
Hit Points: 3 to 24 (13 Average)
Speed: 30 feet
STR: 10 (+0)
DEX: 14 (+2)
CON: 10 (+0)
INT: 11 (+0)
WIS: 11 (+0)
CHA: 12 (+1)
Skills: Perception +2, Stealth +4
Senses: Dark Sight 120 feet, Passive Perception 12
Languages: Elvish, Deeptongue
Challenge: 1/4
Eldritch Ancestry: Drow are naturally resistant to being charmed, and they are immune to all forms of magical sleep.
Natural Spellcasting: The drow’s spellcasting ability is based on their Charisma (spell save Difficulty 11). All drow can cast the following spells, which require no material components or implements:
At will: Flickering Wisps
Once per day each: Darkness, Eldritch Glow
Weakness to Sunlight: While in sunlight, the drow suffers disadvantage on all attack rolls, as well as on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
Actions
Shortsword: Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 feet. Hit: 3 to 8 (Average 5) piercing damage.
Hand Crossbow: Ranged Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, range 30 feet/120 feet maximum. Hit: 3 to 8 (Average 5) piercing damage, and the target must pass a Constitution saving throw (Challenge 13) or be poisoned for one hour. If the saving throw fails by five or more, the target is also unconscious while poiso
ned. If the target takes damage or another creature attempts to rouse him or her, the target will wake up.
<<<>>>
The soldiers were tougher than zombies and skeletons, but not by much. They had nastier attacks, and that poison wouldn’t be any fun if it worked, but their hit points were so low that a couple of shots from a crossbow or spear could take them down.
<<<>>>
Drow Sergeant
Medium humanoid, neutral evil
Armor Class: 18 (Studded Leather, +2)
Hit Points: 24 to 80 (52 Average)
Speed: 30 ft.
STR: 13 (+1)
DEX: 18 (+4)
CON: 14 (+2)
INT: 11 (+0)
WIS: 13 (+1)
CHA:12 (+1)
Saving Throws: DEX +6, CON +4, WIS +3
Skills: Perception +4, Stealth +10
Senses: Dark Sight 120 feet, Passive Perception 14
Languages: Elvish, Deeptongue
Challenge: 3
Eldritch Ancestry: Drow are naturally resistant to being charmed, and they are immune to all forms of magical sleep.
Natural Spellcasting: The drow’s spellcasting ability is based on their Charisma (spell save Difficulty 11). All drow can cast the following spells, which require no material components or implements:
At will: Flickering Wisps
Once per day each: Darkness, Eldritch Glow
Weakness to Sunlight: While in sunlight, the drow suffers disadvantage on all attacks, as well as on Wisdom (Perception) checks that rely on sight.
Actions
Double Strike: The drow makes two short sword attacks.
Shortsword: Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 feet. Hit: 5 to 10 (7 Average) piercing damage plus 1 to 6 (3 Average) poison damage.
Hand Crossbow: Ranged Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, range 30 feet / 120 feet maximum. Hit: 3 to 8 (Average 5) piercing damage, and the target must pass a Constitution saving throw (Challenge 13) or be poisoned for one hour. If the saving throw fails by five or more, the target is also unconscious while poisoned. If the target takes damage or another creature attempts to wake it, the target will wake up.
