by Nick Harrow
I’d already taken a close look at the Tablet of Transformation after the undead slaughter, so there was no point in revisiting that one. I’d hoped the tablets would hold some new ability that would ensure my victory over the bad guys, but that wasn’t in the cards. I let out an exasperated sigh, banished my tablets, and leaned back in my throne.
“That’s not a very happy face,” Zillah said as she entered my burial chamber. She chucked me under the chin with the back edge of her stinger. “Turn that frown upside down before the wahket get in here, boss. They need to see you ready to get out there and kick ass. I also don’t like it when you frown, because it makes your face less pleasant to look at, and—”
I bared my teeth in a death’s-head rictus.
“Better?” I asked.
“Um, no,” she said. “Maybe I could do a little somethin’ somethin’, you know, to help raise your spirits before things get bloody.”
“I wish we had time,” I said. I let my face relax into a natural, if not particularly wide, smile. “I hoped I had more options with my dungeon lord abilities, but it looks like this fight is going to come down to spears and bows again.”
The scorpion queen twisted around to give me a pleasant view of her posterior and wiggled her tail.
“And stingers!” she said. “At least we’ll have a drow feast when this is over.”
For once, I was grateful that I couldn’t eat or drink while disincarnated.
“We’re definitely not having that,” Nephket said as she entered my burial chamber at the head of a column of wahket. Anunaset and three of her sisters marched over to my sarcophagus and dumped their loot into it.
“You’re not,” Zillah corrected. “But I’m pretty sure I am. And Kezakazek might, too.”
The drow brought up the rear of the wahket train, and she smirked when she heard her name.
“Maybe,” she said. “That makes me a cannibal, which is a stretch even for my people.”
“It will be so good,” Zillah enthused. “We can gather some peppers outside, grind them up, make a nice chili...”
“It’s time to get ready for the bad guys,” I said, cutting off Zillah’s buffet menu before the wahket got completely freaked out. From the uneasy looks in their eyes, their proud warrior tradition did not extend to eating their fallen foes. “According to Pinchy’s report, Delsinia’s dickheads should arrive in the next ten minutes or so. First up, I want eight of the wahket to head back to the chamber of statues and restring our trap there. Whatever Delsinia sends is going to come through that way, and I want as many of the invaders as possible crushed in that channel. After the statues come down, I want the wahket stationed at the head of the ladder to stab the shit out of any hostiles that try to climb up.”
Nephket nodded briskly and clapped her hands together to silence the excited chatter of the wahket.
“Anunaset,” she said, “take your team and get them into position.”
Eight of the cat women left my chamber quickly, spears at the ready and crossbows slung over their shoulders. All eight wore the chain mail I’d created earlier, which reminded me I needed to make some more.
Fortunately, the drow gear was worth a tidy eleven hundred and twenty-five gold pieces. Five hundred of that came from the studded leather, which was apparently fancier than I’d thought. The hand crossbows were each worth seventy-five gold pieces, which accounted for another three hundred and seventy-five gold pieces in my treasury. That gave me two thousand and two hundred gold pieces, total.
I immediately spent two hundred and fifty to make custom-fitted chain shirts for the remaining wahket and Nephket. I’d have given my familiar the studded leather, but the drow who’d worn it was far too small in the chest and ass to make it comfortable for Neph. I wasn’t sure I could alter it without damaging it, so I put it aside for more research.
Later. When a rival dungeon lord wasn’t trying to kill me.
“I need another team of eight wahket in the audience chamber,” I said to Nephket. “Get them into their chain shirts and have them stand guard at the edge of the raised platform in that room. I’ll remove the stairs up to the platform, so your team should have an easier time holding the high ground against the invaders.”
Nephket nodded and called out another group, who scrambled to get into their armored shirts. My familiar watched her people with sad eyes, and I knew she understood what I’d just said.
Removing the stairs up to the exit from the audience chamber reduced the odds of a successful retreat by Anunaset’s team to almost zero. If they were overwhelmed and had to pull back from the statue room, those wahket were likely to die. That was a bitter pill to swallow, but a fact we all needed to get our heads around. Death was on the wind today, and anyone who let down their guard for even a second could be swept away by its icy talons.
“Set up a third group of eight in the hallway outside the burial chamber. I’ve made a little maze in Zillah’s bedroom, which I’m sure you’ve all walked to get here, and I want the third team to use it to their advantage.”
“Last group.” I raised my voice to be heard over the clink and rattle of chain shirts and weapons. “Head to the scorpion lair and wait there until I give you another command. Scoot.”
The wahket hustled to get geared up and to their posts, and I was proud of their professionalism and eagerness for battle. They wanted to become the fearsome warriors their people had once been, and they would do whatever I asked to regain their former glory. They were motivated, hungry troops.
The very best kind.
“And what would you have me do?” Nephket asked.
“Go with the last group and hole up in Pinchy’s lair,” I said.
Nephket opened her mouth to protest, but I leaned forward and kissed her hard on the mouth.
“You have a part to play in this, Neph,” I said. “Trust me.”
She looked dubious but nodded sharply and headed to the sarcophagus to grab her armor and get going.
“She’ll kill you if you keep her out of harm’s way in this fight,” Zillah said under her breath. “Can’t say I blame her.”
“She has a job to do,” I said. “And, yes, it’s an important one.”
“Good,” Kezakazek said. “Care to tell me why we’re not pushing into Delsinia’s territory instead of just waiting for her to show up on our doorstep with a team of asskickers?”
“Two reasons,” I said. “First, if any of you get killed in this fight, you’re in my dungeon. You’ll respawn and be ready to go at sundown.”
“Valid,” Kezakazek agreed.
“And Delsinia’s troops who die here will just be dead,” I said. “We have the advantage here, and I’m not going to abandon it.”
“Good plan. We win this fight, then go after Delsinia while her pants are down,” Zillah said. “I like it.”
Armed and armored, Nephket stalked back to my throne. She bowed low before me, then stood up straight and stared deep into my eyes.
“Our lives are yours,” the priestess said. “We will do whatever it takes to win this fight.”
My familiar’s eyes were wet with unshed tears when she said those words. She wasn’t only pledging her life, but the lives of the thirty-two wahket who served me. Nephket understood the stakes on the table that day, and she wanted me to understand that she didn’t regret the choices she’d made that led her to that point.
“We will win this,” I said to Nephket. I took both of her hands in mine and leaned forward until our foreheads almost touched. “I swear to you.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have made her that promise, but I meant every word of it. The wahket weren’t just beautiful and ferocious cat women, they were the last of their kind. If we lost this battle today, my core would wink out like a candle in a hurricane. My guardians would die, and Rathokhetra would be no more.
But more disturbing to me would be the loss of an entire people. While I lived, the wahket had a chance to regain their former glory. They could return to Soke
tra in force, given time.
I wanted that to happen. I would make that happen.
Rathokhetra’s dry, sandy chuckle echoed through my thoughts like the scraping footsteps of a jackal creeping through an abandoned tomb.
“We’re here too, boss,” Zillah said. A lopsided grin had painted itself across her face, and she seemed uncertain of what to say for the first time since I’d met her. “What do you need us to do?”
I gave Nephket one last squeeze and a gentle kiss.
“Go,” I said. “Wait for my word.”
She kissed me back with a ferocious hunger. A low, rumbling growl echoed in her chest as she backed away from me. She turned sharply and left, her strides determined.
“As for you,” I motioned for Zillah to approach the throne. “You’re the last line of defense with the wahket outside this room. Promise me you won’t fuck it up.”
“Ooh, a challenge.” She grinned at me. “No one’s getting past me. And, for the record, I’m willing to die for you, too. As long as we don’t make it a habit.”
The scorpion queen reared back on her tail and banished the armor that concealed her most sensitive areas. She spread her arms wide and arched over me like a cobra preparing to strike, a sly smile playing across her lips.
“I’ll be back for you, dungeon lord,” she promised. “Take a good long look and remember what you’ll lose if you fall today.”
She lunged then and landed with her feet on the arms of my throne and her hands on either side of my head. She crouched down and studied my face for a long moment. Her breath smelled wild and violent, like a predator fresh off a kill.
“I won’t let you down,” I said.
Her tongue darted out and flickered across my lips. She nodded, and then Zillah was gone.
“I’m not going to get all gross and mushy,” Kezakazek said. “But I won’t let you down, either. We’ll kill these pieces of shit and take Delsinia’s dungeon from her. She’ll regret messing with us.”
I reached out for the drow, but she smirked and drew away from me before I could catch her.
“Nope,” she said. “You’ll get a kiss if and only if I don’t die. Work for it, dungeon lord.”
“Then you better get out of here and back up the wahket in the statue room,” I said.
Kezakazek winked at me before she turned on her heel and left for her post.
Alone in my burial chamber, I closed my eyes and lost myself in a moment of meditation. It’d been a couple of days, at least, since I’d focused my mind inward like that, and I found the experience calmed and focused me at a time when I needed it most.
But it did something else, too.
A crack opened in my mind and Rathokhetra’s presence leaked through it. He appeared before my throne and judged me with dark, pitiless eyes.
For a moment, he seemed on the verge of speaking. But after a long pause, he gave me one, slow shake of his head, and then vanished.
I felt windblown sand spit into my face and opened my eyes to an empty burial chamber. Of course it was empty.
Rathokhetra was a ghost. He could haunt me all he wanted, but he couldn’t affect this world any more than I could affect where I’d come from. We were both adrift on different levels of reality, and we’d just have to get used to it.
A sharp pang pricked the edges of my awareness before I could do too much more navel-gazing.
The bad guys had arrived.
Two dozen of Delsinia’s guardians were less than a hundred yards away from my front door, and they were some of the ugliest fucks I’d ever seen.
They were humanoid creatures who were clearly no longer among the living. Their skin was mottled gray and pulled tightly across bones that jutted against its surface as if the skeleton within wanted to burst free of its rotten body. Their eyes glowed an unholy blue, and their mouths were filled with rows of jagged teeth that were so dissimilar they looked like they’d been collected from a dozen different creatures. The invaders had fingers that were tipped with sharpened black nails like the talons of a raptor.
They wore no armor, and no clothes of any kind. The only ornamentation on their bodies were the thick iron collars around their throats that I knew bore Delsinia’s sigil on their back sides.
Both sexes were well represented in an equally disgusting measure. The breasts of the females hung like empty sacks from their chests, and pockets of rot dotted their flappy surfaces. All the males sported raging hard-ons, though half of their members were rotted down to blackened stumps and the other half were pocked with wormholes and septic blisters. Males and females alike were covered in black blotches of mold and nasty open sores that wept putrid fluids.
“Yeah,” I thought to myself. “This is not going to be fun.”
I took a moment to study one of the creatures and really did not like what I saw.
<<<>>>
Ghoul
Medium undead, chaotic evil
Armor Class: 12
Hit Points: 5 to 40 (Average 22)
Speed: 30 feet
STR: 13 (+1)
DEX: 15 (+2)
CON: 10 (+0)
INT: 7 (-2)
WIS: 10 (+0)
CHA: 6 (-2)
Damage Immunities: Poison
Condition Immunities: Charmed, Exhausted, Poisoned
Senses: Dark Sight 60 feet, Passive Perception 10
Languages: Common
Challenge: 1
Actions
Bite: Melee Weapon Attack: +2 to hit. Hit: 4 to 14 (Average 9) piercing damage.
Claws: Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit. Hit: 4 to 10 (Average 7) slashing damage. Creatures who are struck by this attack and are not elves or undead must make a successful Constitution saving throw against Difficulty 10 or be paralyzed for 1 minute. The target is entitled to another saving throw every six seconds, and a successful save ends the paralysis immediately.
<<<>>>
That did not look good.
The ghouls had shit for armor class, which was nice, and their hit points weren’t much more impressive.
But they had two attacks apiece, twice as many as the wahket, and a single lucky hit was enough to take a wahket out of the fight. Based on my dungeon lord’s instincts, it looked like the wahket had about a fifty-fifty chance of succumbing to paralysis any time they got hit by those claws. This could quickly turn into a clusterfuck.
“All right, kids,” I said. The Dungeon Speaks ability amplified my voice until it boomed like thunder through every corner of my territory. I could have restricted the announcement to just my people, but I wanted the bad guys to know I was onto their shenanigans. “We’ve got guests. Let’s put out the welcome mat.
“And kill all of these fuckers.”
Chapter 7: Blood and Gore
“MORE UNDEAD,” KEZAKAZEK groused as the first ghouls made their way into the trench that ran down the center of the statue room. “This is going to suck.”
“These are ghouls,” I said to my people, and willed my voice to only reach their ears. I wasn’t sure if the ghouls could understand what I said, but I didn’t see any point in taking chances. “Their claws can paralyze you, so use the defenses I set up and hold them at bay with your spears. They’ve got no special immunity to crossbows, which means you can fill them full of holes.”
The wahket nodded uncertainly at my words, but I could feel the fear in their hearts. They would fight for all they were worth, but they were still just a few days from their lives as peaceful villagers. One way or another, this battle would transform them all.
And then I took a deep breath and gave them a cold-hearted command.
“If any wahket get paralyzed, leave them where they fall.”
That last sounded harsh, but it had to be said. If the wahket tried to evacuate their fallen, they’d only lose more of their number to the ghouls. A single scratch would be enough to take out one of the cat warriors, and if they were distracted by their fallen sisters, their defenses would be down. A single casualty
could easily cascade into far too many if they didn’t keep their minds on their enemies.
Before the wahket could respond, the enemy crashed through my dungeon’s entrance in a flood of diseased flesh. It was time to fight.
“Hold the trap,” I said to the wahket in the statue chamber. “When I give the word, yank the rope.”
My hands tightened on the arms of my throne at the strange, creeping sensation that flowed through me as Delsinia’s guardians advanced toward my core. Rage flared in my heart at the thought of these filthy beasts defiling my tomb. The anger was so intense and all-consuming I at first thought it came from Rathokhetra, but that old bastard remained strangely silent.
This hissy fit belonged solely to me.
Every step the ghouls took into my dungeon stoked the fires of my anger. I wanted to command the wahket to trigger the trap and jump into the pit to rend the ghouls with tooth and claw. Hell, I wanted to climb down off my throne and burn all the ka I had to rip those filthy, maggot-eaten beasts apart with my bare hands. I’d carry the scraps of their rotted flesh back to Delsinia and force her to eat them before I drained her core. I’d...
What the hell was wrong with me? I clamped down on my anger with an iron will and dragged my attention away from my dreams of future vengeance and back to the battle at hand.
I had all the faith in the world that my people would defeat these ghouls, but only if I kept my head in the game and my passion for slaughter in check.
I held my tongue until the first ghouls had almost reached the ladder that would let them begin their climb out of the trench. The rest of the undead were packed into the pit like piranhas swarming toward their prey.
“Pull the rope!” I said, and my voice boomed in the statue chamber like a clap of thunder. “Kez, fire at will.”
A moment later there was a tremendous crash as the statues tumbled down into the narrow trench filled with ghouls. Beneath the thunder of stone smashing into stone, I heard the thick liquid sound of pulped meat and the brittle crack of bone as it splintered into shards beneath the weight of the statues.
