by Nick Harrow
Unfortunately, the weak right side of the wahket flank was on the verge of falling. It wouldn’t be long before the undead pushed through and Zillah would be pinned between two enemy forces.
The line faltered, and I knew it was time to spring the trap I’d set for these bastards.
“Anunaset,” I called. “Attack the rear!”
A dark force tried to wriggle into my thoughts, but I banished it with a mental shout. I didn’t know who or what was behind this amber light that kept giving my enemies a second wind, but I vowed to kill them.
Slowly.
Anunaset’s squad charged into my burial chamber on almost silent feet. The ghouls had no idea they were under attack from the rear until it was far too late.
The wahket plunged their spears into the backs of the unsuspecting undead, and black blood flowed across the stones of my dungeon’s floor in thick, sluggish streams.
“Yes!” Zillah crowed. “Fuck ‘em up, Anu!”
I clenched my fingers around the arms of my throne and ground my teeth. We were winning, but our edge was slight, and it could turn in the blink of an eye with a few lucky claw strikes from the ghouls. If the tide turned again, I’d have to manifest.
But I didn’t want to do that unless I had no choice. There was another fight coming that day, and I needed my reserves of ka to kill Delsinia super dead.
Kezakazek had arrived with Anunaset and poured a steady stream of acid spheres into the backs of the ghouls. The undead were confused by the sudden strike to the rear, and not even the amber light seemed capable of getting them organized again. The ghouls’ right flank was wiped out before they could turn to face this new attack.
Anunaset howled and laughed as she rammed her spear through a ghoul’s open mouth and out the back of its head.
But there were still ten ghouls on their feet, and they fought with a renewed fury. They stopped trying to kill the wahket and focused all their attention on reaching my throne to get to the core.
Zillah shouted as one of the undead raked its claws along her right forearm, but she shrugged off its paralyzing effects and retaliated by slamming the haft of her spear across that ghoul’s head. The blow landed with such force it deformed the ghoul’s skull and popped one of its burning blue eyes from its socket.
Two of the wahket on the right flank weren’t so fortunate, and they went down with claw marks across the backs of their hands. They were just scratches, but the paralyzing ability of the ghouls still wormed its way into the unfortunate cat women.
The wahket had done a good job of holding back the ghouls, but the right side of my flank was about to collapse, and once that happened the ghouls would stream to my core.
It was time to incarnate.
I stood from my throne and raised my khopesh overhead.
“That’s far enough, assholes,” I called. My voice boomed like an earthquake’s crack, and every burning eye in the room turned toward me. I used The Dungeon’s Visage ability to appear before my enemies like an avatar of destruction. In their eyes, I was covered head to toe with golden armor studded with glowing blue jewels and my khopesh was a blazing crescent of destruction.
I reached out for the ka burning in my core and prepared for the glory of battle.
“Someone call for reinforcements?” Nephket cried as she charged into the room with the rest of the wahket. They burst from the scorpion tunnel in the east wall of my burial chamber and unleashed a blizzard of spear strikes that took out two of the ghouls on that side.
“About time!” Zillah cried. “Don’t let me have all the fun.”
The sudden attack from Nephket’s squad gave my left flank time to turn and come at the ghouls from that side. Combined with the attack from the rear and Zillah’s vicious strikes, the bad guys didn’t have a chance.
I sat back in my throne with a nasty smile and watched the last stage of the battle play out.
The wahket tore the rest of the ghouls apart like a pack of cats with an injured mouse. In seconds, the last of the undead had fallen, and my burial chamber was covered in dead bodies and splatters of black blood.
Delsinia screamed in my thoughts, and the frustrated, terrified sound brought a smile to my lips. I didn’t know if she could hear me, but I spoke to her anyway.
“That’s right,” I said. “You went all in with a pair of aces, but I flopped a full boat on the river. I’ll be seeing you, Delsinia. Real fucking soon.”
Nephket turned her attention to the fallen wahket, but from the exuberant feeling that emanated from her I was sure we didn’t have any fatalities. A few scratches, some temporarily paralyzed wahket, but no one had died today.
At least not yet.
“Welcome to Level Four, dungeon lord,” a now-familiar voice whispered in my thoughts.
I checked the ka vessels on the inside of my right arm, and pride welled up inside me. That battle had netted me forty-eight ka. I’d jumped from seventy-two total motes to one hundred and twenty. And seventy-one of those motes were still free to spend. Maybe I could splurge on some of those upgrades I’d been eyeballing—
“Come here, you,” Zillah said. She was splattered with the blood and viscera of her fallen enemies, but her eyes burned with a hunger that ran much deeper than her bloodlust. Her armor vanished as she crawled onto my throne and straddled me. She pulled me close and her heart hammered against mine as she lowered her mouth to nip at my lips. Her tongue darted across my teeth, and her breath blew into me with the heat of a desert wind.
The scorpion queen’s hunger pulled me in with the inexorable and undeniable force of a whirlwind. For a moment, all thoughts of the battle that had just passed vanished from my head, and my concentration was chained to the warm heat of Zillah on my lap and her mouth on mine.
“Gross,” Kezakazek said. “I mean, seriously. These pieces are still twitching on the floor, Zillah.”
“I can feel something else twitching, too,” my guardian said with a husky voice.
“Easy,” I said. My blood still ran hot for the scorpion queen, but the all-consuming spell of passion had been broken, at least for the moment. I ran my fingers down the scorpion queen’s naked back, and her muscles rippled under my touch. “I want this as much as you, but we have another fight to deal with first.”
“Are we going to kill a dungeon lord?” the scorpion queen asked, her voice low and smoky. “Please tell me we’re going to kill a dungeon lord. I’ve waited my whole life for that. Oh, this is terribly exciting. Not that what we were doing wasn’t exciting, but we’ve done that before and killing a dungeon lord is new—”
“Yes,” I said. “We’re going to kill a dungeon lord.”
“When?” Kezakazek said.
“Right. Fucking. Now.”
Chapter 8: Defenders
WHILE NEPHKET TENDED to the wounds of the wahket, and Zillah and Kezakazek traded war stories from the previous battle, I rooted around in my tablets to see what new tricks I’d gained at fourth level.
I scanned the Tablet of Engineering first in the hope that I’d find the temple waiting there for me. I was disappointed to discover that the only options available for me at level four were two new traps, a couple of triggers, something called an ore extractor, and an arcane laboratory. Those might be useful at some point in the future, but they wouldn’t help me carve Delsinia’s heart out of her chest.
“On to the next one,” I muttered.
The guardians tablet had three new level-four abilities. Berserk Fury would allow me to dramatically increase the combat effectiveness of one guardian while reducing their defenses. That may have been what triggered the ghouls into their frenzied final assault on my core, but I didn’t want to use the wahket or any of my guardians like that.
The Soul Mount would let me temporarily inhabit a guardian, which I could think of all sorts of dirty uses for, but it didn’t feel right, either. I’d consider that one for later, but for the moment, it went on the discard pile.
Which only left Familiar Bo
nd.
Well, wasn’t that interesting?
<<<>>>
FAMILIAR BOND
Cost: 15 motes of ka
Requirement: Arcane Conduit or Divine Speaker
This ability allows the dungeon lord to cast any spells he knows through his familiar. The dungeon lord does not have to incarnate to cast these spells, but the familiar must be able to say the words, make the gestures, and wield the implements necessary to cast the spell.
The dungeon lord can cast spells through his familiar at any distance while both are within his dungeon. If the dungeon lord is in the dungeon and the familiar is not, the range is limited to one mile. If both dungeon lord and familiar are outside of the dungeon, the maximum range for this ability is one hundred feet.
<<<>>>
Well, hello, nurse. The Familiar Bond ability wasn’t cheap, and it would require me to pick up either the Arcane Conduit or Divine Speaker abilities as well, which would raise the total cost by another ten motes. But it would also allow me to cast spells through Nephket without the need to incarnate.
That seemed extraordinarily useful.
I mulled over my decision for a few moments and then picked up both Divine Speaker and Familiar Bond for a total investment of twenty-five motes of ka.
A faint golden haze coalesced on the right side of my vision, and when I focused my attention on it the word “spells” appeared in the same hieroglyphs used on my tablets. I currently had no available spells, which made sense: I hadn’t purchased any of the spellcasting abilities I’d seen on the Tablet of Incarnation.
I summoned that golden slate and reviewed its contents carefully. For a moment, I considered jumping into the deep end and just buying up all the spellcasting abilities I could afford, but I reined in my impulses before I did something so foolish. I had a lot of ka, but that didn’t mean I should burn it all to become a budget Gandalf.
I focused my attention on the first-level spellcasting abilities and was pleased to see a list of spells unspool from beneath each option that I examined. I flicked through each of the schools in search of something that I could use to heal my allies during battle.
When my eyes settled on Spellcasting – Evocation - Level 1, I found what I was looking for. The Heal Wounds and Restoring Mantra spells both looked very promising. Closer examination showed me that Heal Wounds would restore one to eight hit points to one of my allies with a touch, while Restoring Mantra would heal one to four points of damage at range. That was enough healing to get even a gravely wounded wahket back on her feet.
There was also a third spell that looked every bit as intriguing. Light of Condemnation allowed me to blast an enemy for four to thirty-two points of damage and surround them with a glowing light that would make it easier for my allies to beat the shit out of them.
“Hell, yes,” I said. I selected the Spellcasting ability for ten motes of ka. That left me with exactly thirty-six motes in my core. That’d buy me three minutes of incarnation if push came to shove. That had to be enough.
“You look pleased with yourself,” Nephket said as she approached my throne. Her hands were bloody from the battle and tending the wounds of the wahket, but her eyes were bright and gleamed with pride.
I banished my tablets and offered her a wide grin.
“I am,” I said. “It looks like the wahket are feeling better.”
Of the thirty-two wahket who served me, twenty of them hadn’t suffered so much as a scratch in the battle. Eight of them looked only a little banged up, and I knew they’d be telling tales of their derring-do for the next year.
But the last four were out of the fight for a few days, maybe longer. Their wounds didn’t look life-threatening, but they were severe enough to make them useless in a fight until they’d healed.
“Some,” Nephket said. “But as you can see, some are not fit for the field. I suggest we leave the wounded here to defend you and your core in case of another attack.”
I weighed our options and pondered our best course of action.
The wahket we left behind wouldn’t be great fighters, but they might be able to slow down any enemies who came into my dungeon until I could get back here to deal with them. It was a cold calculus, but it was the right choice.
The abilities I’d just purchased enabled me to cast four first-level spells each day. I could have completely healed the most seriously wounded wahket, but that didn’t seem like the best use of my resources. Those spells would do me a lot more good if I used them to heal Kezakazek or Zillah in the heat of battle. But if I was stuck in my tomb, I wouldn’t be close enough to my guardians to do the healing.
Delsinia had come into my dungeon, which meant she’d left hers behind. And if she could do it, there was no reason I couldn’t manage the same trick.
I rooted around in Rathokhetra’s memories until I found what I needed. It was a risky tactic, and if I fucked it up I’d lose everything, but it was our best chance at ending this fight and expanding my territory in one battle.
“That’s a good suggestion,” I concurred. “Those four will stay behind while the rest of us go after Delsinia. But the wounded won’t be guarding my core.”
That got the attention of Zillah and Kezakazek. The scorpion queen hoisted the drow off her feet with her tail and stalked to my throne.
“Then who is going to guard your core while we’re off slaughtering the bad guys?” Zillah asked.
“I am,” I said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“You’ll have to explain that one to me,” Kezakazek said. “Because if you are guarding your core, that means you won’t be coming with us to assault your rival’s dungeon? Then how will you claim her core after we put the beat down on the rest of Delsinia’s minions?”
“I’m coming with you,” I corrected her. “And so is my core.”
“Did you take a shot to the noggin during the fight, boss?” Zillah asked. “Because I just heard you say you’re going to bring your core into your enemy’s lair.”
“Hear me out,” I said. “The drow attacked us, right? And then Delsinia sent ghouls after us.”
“And what if she has more drow and ghouls waiting in the wings?” Zillah asked. “They’ll get your core, and that’ll be the end.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I felt Delsinia when she attacked. She expected those ghouls to crush us. She’s back in her dungeon, right now, licking her wounds. And she’s scared shitless.”
“I still don’t understand why that’s a good reason for you to bring your core with us,” Nephket said with a frown.
“Because Delsinia’s only real shot at getting my core is to launch a sneak attack while we’re invading her dungeon,” I said. “If we only leave a skeleton force behind to guard the burial chamber, she could sneak around us and attack the core while we’re away. The wounded won’t be able to fend off another ghoul, much less a dungeon lord.”
All three of my guardians stared at me, their arms crossed over their chests. They exchanged uncertain glances and then went back to glaring at me.
“This doesn’t feel good,” Nephket said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I agree,” Kezakazek said. “What if Delsinia’s setting a trap for you? You’ll waltz in there with your core and just hand it over.”
I leaned back in my throne and drummed my fingertips on its arms. The silence stretched out between us to an uncomfortable length, but I didn’t budge. I stared at each of them in turn and waited for them to change their minds.
“Oh, shit,” Zillah said. “He’s not going to budge on this. We’ll just have to watch his back and make sure no one steals that core.”
“Thank you,” I said with mock sweetness to Zillah. “Now that that’s out of the way, we need to hit Delsinia hard. Now.”
“The wahket could use more rest,” Nephket started.
“When we’re finished with Delsinia, they can sleep for days,” I said. “I want to strike before she can recover from her defeat. If we ge
t to her now, we could be through with this whole fucking mess by dinnertime.”
Nephket nodded and gave me an exaggerated curtsy. I could tell she was a little miffed at me, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. There was only room for one commander on the battlefield, and that was me whether they liked it or not.
“I’ll scout,” Zillah said. “I’ll meet up with Pinchy and see what’s what.”
“Reach out to me if you run into anything,” I said. “But I don’t feel anything in the tunnels of my dungeon out that way. I think we’re good for now. But watch the entrance at Delsinia’s end.”
The scorpion queen snapped me a salute with her spear, then ducked out through the hole in the west wall of my burial chamber.
“I still don’t think this is safe,” Kezakazek said. “But if this is what you want to do, this is what we’ll do.”
“You better believe it.” I threw in a wink to soften the sting of my words. “I appreciate your support, Kez. We’ll get through this.”
“And then you’ll advance me?” she asked with a smirk.
“We’ll see how you do,” I said. “But, yeah, that’s on the list.”
She nodded and then reached out to turn my right hand over. She raised an eyebrow at the empty ka vessels on the inside of my forearm.
“You spent some ka?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I picked up a couple of new tricks.”
She gave me an expectant look, but I kept my secrets to myself. She’d see what I had up my sleeve soon enough.
In the meantime, I prepared two Heal Wounds, one Restoring Mantra, and one Light of Condemnation spell. Four first-level spells were all I could manage in a day, and I hoped that would be enough to deal with whatever we ran into.
“We’re ready,” Nephket said. The wahket arranged themselves into neat ranks behind her, and they bowed their heads and raised their spears as she spoke.
“Then let’s go.” I grimaced at the dead ghouls scattered around the burial chamber. I banished them with a wave of my hand and burned their blood from the walls, ceiling, and floor. I also created a few small cots for the wounded wahket. “I’ll keep an eye on this place while we’re gone. If anything happens, I’ll send help.”
