by Nick Harrow
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Parry: The drow adds three to its armor against one melee attack that would hit it. The drow must be aware of the attacker and be wielding a melee weapon to use this ability.
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Ah, fuck. That guy looked like serious trouble.
The violet-eyed bastard flicked his platinum hair over his shoulder and knelt down to get a better look at the floor. He chuckled and then wagged his finger in the air in front of his face. Now that he was inside my dungeon, I had no trouble understanding what he said.
“Ha, another dungeon lord,” he chuckled. “A good trick, but my eyes are too keen to fall for such a basic trap. You will make a pleasant surprise for my master to add to his menagerie. I shall return with reinforcements to deal with you.”
This motherfucker...
“Kez,” I thought to the drow. “Get ready to make some noise.”
Before the enemy drow could retreat and head back to their dungeon, I ran straight through them. Even the cocky sergeant gave an involuntary shudder as I passed through his body, and when I appeared behind the small force, they all nearly leaped out of their skin.
“You dare to defile my home with your presence?” I shouted. “I will tear these tunnels down around your ears before I will allow you to step another foot into my domain.”
The second I finished my corny little speech, Kezakazek unleashed her Thunderclap spell.
I’d been prepared for the spell, but it still jolted me. The deafening sound roared through the narrow dungeon passageway, and the intruders cried out in pain and surprise. Even the sergeant, tough fucker that he was, let out a shocked yelp and shook his head as if dazed. The soldiers, obviously not as strong as their leader, coughed and gasped as blood burst from their nostrils and leaked from their ears.
That was a hell of a spell.
Between my sudden appearance and the sonic boom that had burst their eardrums, the drow panicked. The sergeant shouted a warning and then leaped across the pit trap to the north side of the kill chute. He spun in place and tried to warn the soldiers not to pursue, to turn and run, but they were beyond listening to him. They charged forward in a tangled knot.
Right onto the pit trap’s trigger.
The floor swung open by the hinges on its west side and banged against the wall of the pit. The drow shouted with surprise and plunged into the darkness.
Their leader cursed and took an involuntary step back from the edge of the pit that had just swallowed his men.
Right into the ram trap’s trigger zone.
The heavy stone face shot forward and threw the unprepared drow sergeant across the pit. He slammed into the wall on the far side with a meaty crunch, and his nose burst apart like a tomato hit with a sledgehammer. His shortsword dropped from his nerveless fingers, and he too plummeted into the trap.
A ragged chain of screams burst from the pit as the spear trap triggered and impaled the drow on a half-dozen sharpened spikes. I hustled up to the edge of the pit and stared down at the carnage, a warm, fuzzy feeling unspooling from my blackened dungeon lord heart.
“Ouch,” I said. “That looks like it probably stung.”
The combination of the fall and the trap inside the pit had killed two of the drow soldiers, and their bodies dangled from the spikes that jutted from the wall. The other pair of soldiers had collapsed onto the bottom of the pit with their hands over their heads. The trap’s spikes had ripped furrows through their chainmail, and blood showed bright red against their exposed midnight-black skin.
It was good to see these assholes squirm.
The sergeant, however, was far from out of the fight. He glared up at me and raised his crossbow.
“You are a fool, dungeon lord,” he snarled. “House Jarazikek will chain you to our will. You have no chance against our master, Kozerek.”
“Ah, you’re cute when you’re mad,” I said. “But you’re down there, and I’m up here, so it looks like you’re losing this particular fight.”
The idiot fired his crossbow at me, and the black-tipped bolt whipped through my head.
Of course, it did no damage, because I was as immaterial as the wind. The poisoned bolt shattered on the ceiling behind me, and pieces of broken wood and metal rained down around me like the drow’s broken dreams.
“Kill these assholes,” I ordered the wahket.
Crossbows fired from overhead, and bolts rained down onto the dark elves in a deadly hail. The sergeant raised his hand and unleashed a flood of multicolored lights that flew up through the hole in the ceiling above us, but they had no effect other than to illuminate the wahket as they fired their crossbows.
The cat women’s bolts, on the other hand, had a significant effect on the dark elves.
The intruders’ chain shirts deflected a handful of the missiles, but more of the deadly projectiles found their way past that protection. The drow soldiers died with strangled screams, and their sergeant howled with rage and pain, and then went silent along with his little friends.
The pit’s spikes retracted, and the darkly elegant bodies of my enemies fell to the floor. They lay there like bleeding sacks of meat, which was just what I wanted to see.
“Nice work,” I said. I shot a thumbs up to Nephket and the wahket in the murder gallery. The cat women grinned down at me, the tips of their bright white fangs peeking past their lower lips.
“Fish in a barrel,” Anunaset called down.
“Clay!” Kezakazek shouted and jabbed her finger down at the pit.
The wahket threw themselves away from the low stone wall at the gallery’s edge. Another crossbow bolt whipped through the air next to my head and shattered against the ceiling above me.
“You will die for what you have done to my property,” a choked voice gurgled from the bottom of the pit.
The drow sergeant had survived the onslaught. A spear had punched through his abdomen and shattered a fist-sized cluster of links in his chain mail shirt, but he still had enough life in him to cause me grief.
Thick amber auras surrounded the fallen dark elves, and their corpses twitched and writhed as if their spirits struggled to drag themselves back from whatever hell had claimed them.
A cold knot of dread twisted itself into my guts like a fist wrapped in barbed wire. Something pulled at my core, tugged at the motes of ka it contained, as if eager to pluck them free and put them to some dark use. What black magic fuckery was this?
Before any of us could react, that strange and sickly light flowed away from the corpses and wrapped itself around the sergeant’s boots. It crawled up his legs and around his waist in a flash, then found its way to the puncture wound in his torso. An icy keening echoed from the depths of the pit as that bizarre radiance wormed its way into the drow’s injury and vanished in the blink of an eye.
“Levitate,” the dark elf sergeant barked in the ugly language known as Deeptongue. His body floated out of the pit and a dark grin split his face. A flickering amber radiance burst from his eyes and mouth like the light from a candle in a particularly devilish jack-o'-lantern.
Kezakazek unleashed one of her patented killer acid spheres, but the drow sergeant scoffed and twisted his body away from the attack. In a handful of moments he’d risen almost to the hole in the murder gallery’s floor. He’d be up there with the wahket any second, and then the killing would begin. They were no match for the sergeant, and they wouldn’t have time to form up behind their shield wall.
Death was coming for my people, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“That’s right, dungeon lord,” the dark elf gloated. “Their blood will be on your hands. Kozerek has come for them.”
I prepared to incarnate, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop him. He’d floated up out of my reach, and I wouldn’t get to the gallery before he started the slaughter. I could kill him, yes, but not in time to save the wahket.
“Nope,” Zillah crowed as she plummeted through the hole in the murder gallery’s floor.
The pair plummeted toward the pit, and I shouted a warning to my guardian.
“There are traps down there!” I cried.
“I know,” Zillah said, and her rear legs went wide to brace her above the pit’s yawning maw.
The dark elf wasn’t so fortunate. Zillah’s mancatcher drove him down into the bottom of the pit and pinned him there with an iron grip on his throat. Blood leaked out from his black skin where the spear had cut through his flesh, but his eyes glared up at me with defiant hatred.
“We’re just the tip of the spear,” the drow said. He coughed up a tablespoon of dark blood, which ran from the corners of his mouth and spilled over his chin. Sparks of amber light dotted the blood and bubbled on his lips like fireflies. “Our pet dungeon lord has already dispatched her forces to deal with you. These pathetic kittens will be nothing before their might. And then I will come for you, dungeon lord, and you will bend to my will like the others before you.”
“Big talk from a dead man,” I said. And then to Zillah, “Kill him.”
The drow sergeant grunted as the spear’s tines snapped together with a sound that reminded me of a nice crisp bite of a red apple. The amber light vanished from his eyes and mouth, and his body sagged.
Zillah pulled her spear back, but the barbs had caught on the drow’s severed spine. She leaned back on her tail and hoisted the corpse out of the pit, then stared at the sluggish flow of blood from his torn arteries.
“I’ve never eaten drow before,” she said. “Can I?”
Kezakazek peered down from the murder gallery and shrugged.
“We aren’t poisonous,” the dark elf said. “But I’m not sure we taste very good.”
“You taste just fine,” Zillah said with a lascivious grin. “We’ll see about this guy.” She pinned the dead body to the floor with her tail and pulled the spear free.
“Before you turn into a free-range cannibal,” I said, “can you use your spear to fish the rest of them out of the pit? I don’t care what happens to their bodies, but I’d like to save their gear.”
“Sure,” Zillah said. “You get the loot, I get the meat.”
“I don’t want to see you eating those things,” Nephket said from above. “And I don’t want to smell it, either.”
The scorpion queen retrieved one of the drow from the bottom of the pit and tossed his body onto the sergeant’s.
“I thought lions were meat eaters,” Zillah said. “Getting picky on me?”
“Oh, I eat a lot of things,” Nephket said. “But I’m not eating people. Not even evil people.”
“What about unicorns?” Zillah asked as she stacked another dead body on the pile. “I hear they’re delicious. I’ve never been able to get close enough to one to see, though, because of the virginity thing.”
“I think that’s just a myth,” Kezakazek said. “Why would a horse care whether you were a virgin or not?”
“For starters, it’s a magical horse,” Nephket said. “And it’s a symbol of purity.”
Zillah scooped two more bodies out and grunted with disgust.
“I’m impure because I like to play a little hide the sausage?” the scorpion queen asked. “Does finger banging my lady friends take me off the good girl list? How about butt stuff? Does that count?”
Nephket held up her hands and laughed.
“Okay,” she said. “You’re probably right. Maybe it is just a myth. Who’d want to be friends with a horse who didn’t want you to do any of those things?”
“I’ll drink to that,” I said and immediately regretted the words. Dealing with the drow was thirsty work, and I would’ve gladly burned some ka for a nice, tall drink of Gentleman Jack. Shit, I’d even settle for some shitty Fireball at this point. I just wanted to drink until I relaxed and drifted off into a blissful oblivion for a few days.
Mostly, I wanted to forget the nonsense that drow had spewed. Listening to the sergeant referring to himself in the third person and making all those proclamations about my dire future had exhausted me.
Zillah hoisted the last drow out of the pit and dropped her spear onto the ground next to her.
“Let me just strip the skinny little fuckers,” the scorpion queen said. She struggled with the first chain shirt for a moment before she remembered she was dealing with a dead body. A quick wrench on each of the drow’s arms dislocated his shoulders, and he slipped right out of his armor and landed on the dungeon’s stone floor with a meaty slap.
The drow really were skinny. They were tall but had the scrawny physiques of young guys who hadn’t quite finished puberty. Their long, silver hair and delicate features didn’t make them look any tougher.
They wore pants of thin suede that was stylish but useless as armor, so Zillah didn’t bother removing those. She did poke one of bodies in the groin with the tip of her finger and chuckled.
“If that’s all they’re packing, it’s no wonder there are so few elves,” she said.
She winked at me, then loaded the bodies up on her tail. She coiled the stinger tip around to hold the bodies in place, picked up her spear, and gave me a sharp salute.
“That’s five shortswords, five hand crossbows, four chain shirts, and the sergeant had a nice suit of studded leather armor,” she said. “Those bolt cases probably still have a few poisoned quarrels in them, so be careful. We don’t want anyone getting stuck.”
“Thanks for your help,” I said. “Don’t go too far away. I think we might have more guests.”
“Got you, boss,” Zillah said. “I’m going to haul these tasty morsels over to the scorpion lair. They should keep for a couple of days.”
“Thank you,” Nephket said. “I was hoping you weren’t going to leave them in our bedroom.”
“Well, technically,” Zillah said, “that’s my lair. You are all welcome to hang out in my bed, but I could kick you out anytime I wanted.”
“But you wouldn’t,” Kezakazek said. She licked her lips. “At least you wouldn’t if you know what’s good for you.”
The scorpion queen didn’t have an answer for that, though I did detect the slightest golden blush in her cheeks before she turned away to store her bounty.
“Okay, I need the rest of you to collect this stuff and stow it in the burial chamber,” I said. “If the drow wasn’t bluffing, more bad guys are on their way.”
I jumped over the pit and headed for the core without waiting to see if the wahket did what I’d commanded. I knew they would jump to follow my orders, and if they didn’t Nephket and Kezakazek would kick their asses into gear. I didn’t have the time or inclination to babysit my dungeon’s residents and was grateful it wasn’t necessary.
I’d spent eighteen of my ka on the traps I’d set, but I’d regained sixteen motes by killing the drow invaders. That left me at twenty-three ka, which was enough for several more traps or maybe an upgrade. As soon as I reached my core, I needed to take another look at the tablets and make some decisions.
But before I settled into that research, there was a nagging question I needed to have answered.
“Kez,” I called to my sorceress guardian. “Did you hear the name that asshole said before he died?”
“Kozerek Jarazikek?” she asked. “Yeah, but that’s not him.”
“You sure about that?” I asked. “He seemed awfully confident.”
“Kozerek is like the boogeyman, Clay. He’s the monster under the bed,” Kez said in my thoughts. “Drow use that name when they’re trying to be spooky. The real Kozerek died a long, long time ago.”
“How?” I asked, my curiosity piqued. Even if it was just some goofy drow legend, it might be useful knowledge to have.
“Dungeon lord fucked him up,” Kez said. “Kozerek was a wizard who thought he’d make a name for himself by hunting and killing dun
geon lords. He got two, I guess, before shit went sideways. Some seriously badass dungeon lord smote him in the dick. Strung Kozerek up like a pinata and let him swing at the entrance of his dungeon for something like a hundred years. He’s long gone.”
“Thanks for putting my mind at ease,” I said.
It was nice to know I didn’t actually have some dungeon lord version of Boba Fett hunting my ass, but I still had to worry about Delsinia’s troops. If she had a bunch of bodies to throw at me, I needed to come up with a plan to hold them off, and fast.
Rathokhetra invaded my memories again, this time with a brutal display from some ancient war. Wahket men and women clad in golden, form-fitting armor held off a seemingly endless wave of enemies. Some of the cat people wielded spears and shields, some had khopeshes, and all unleashed ferocious roars as their enemies slammed into them. The creatures these ancient wahket fought were vague and indistinct, wreathed in so many shadows it was impossible to tell what they might’ve been. I wasn’t sure if that was what they really looked like or if Rathokhetra simply didn’t care enough to remember the faces and forms of those his armies had destroyed.
The wahket fought like demons, but the battle’s grind wore them down. They fell, one by one, even as they hacked their enemies to pieces. The battlefield grew slick and muddy with blood.
The memory faded, and I understood what the old dungeon lord was trying to tell me. His answer to my current problem was to throw the wahket at it. He didn’t care how many died, because to him they were just tools to be discarded when they were no longer useful.
I called bullshit on that kind of asshattery. Each of my resources was precious to me, and I wouldn’t squander them any more than I would have set a pile of money on fire back on Earth.
Rathokhetra’s grating chuckle at my thoughts about resources made me catch myself. Maybe I wasn’t as different from him as I’d thought. If there were hard choices to be made, I was willing to make them.
I just didn’t want to.
