by Nick Harrow
<<<>>>
The message’s burning letters flashed across my vision the instant I stepped through the portal, and a mote of ka vanished from my core, which left me with only eight motes.
Sonofabitch. If we didn’t finish this fight in the next forty minutes, something shitty would happen or we’d have to retreat. Maybe both.
We needed to find Kozerek, punch his ticket, and then get the fuck out of here before everything came down around our heads.
“We’ve got one wahket down, not fatal, and she’s been pulled to the rear,” Nephket said. “There are a significant number of drow ahead, and they’ve all got poisoned bows.”
As if in response to Nephket’s status report, a flurry of pint-sized crossbow bolts hissed through the air and clanged off the wahket’s shields. The miniature quarrels shattered into black fragments on impact with the armored wall, but there were plenty more where those came from. If we didn’t close the gap to those archers and take them out soon, they’d get the best of us.
“Crossbows, fire!” I shouted. “Give those needle-dicked dart slingers something to think about other than putting holes in your sisters!”
The first and second ranks of the wahket ducked low behind their shields. With a shout, the third rank unleashed a volley of return fire that punched through the shadows outside my dungeon’s entrance.
I still couldn’t see shit more than ten feet outside of my dungeon, but the screams of wounded drow had no trouble reaching my ears. Their high-pitched wails of surprise and pain raised my spirits, and I thrust my dungeon farther forward.
“Advance!” I barked to the wahket, and they moved forward in a steady, even line. More bolts glanced off their shields and shattered against the stone walls that surrounded my troops.
“Charge incoming!” Zillah suddenly shouted. She’d taken up a position behind the third rank of wahket, but I saw no signs of Pinchy or her siblings. They must be out there feeding information back to the scorpion queen about our enemy’s movements.
Drow warriors burst from the darkness and rushed toward my dungeon’s mouth. They each wielded a pair of shortswords and wore chain armor that was even more ornate than the stuff we’d looted from the sergeant.
“Suck it, fancy boys,” I shouted and shoved the end of my dungeon forward.
The dungeon stopped before it rammed into the drow’s feet, but it still threw off their stride. When their supple black leather boots slammed into a floor that was a couple inches higher than they’d expected, the charge turned into a stumbling disaster.
With panicked shouts, the dark elves tried to right themselves and put on a defense. Unfortunately, their headlong charge carried them forward in an awkward, staggered line and left them wide open to the spear wall of the wahket.
“For Rathokhetra!” the cat women shouted and thrust their spears ahead.
The heavy, sharpened tips slammed into the drow. The dark elf armor turned aside a few strikes, but far more spears penetrated through the thin links with bloody results. The drow’s own momentum carried them into the attack and drove the weapons deeper into their bodies.
One of the drow, a vicious bastard with a wispy mustache so long I was surprised it didn’t get caught in the chain links of his armor, slipped between the spears and slammed his shoulder into a shield. He rebounded from the wahket who held the shield and probably outweighed his skinny ass by at least ten pounds. He snarled in frustration and raised one of his swords high overhead for a slash at her face.
I wanted to shout a warning, but it wasn’t necessary. My guardians were on the job.
The scorpion queen’s mancatcher sang through the air and caught the mustachioed dark elf’s sword arm below the wrist. Before he could slip free of the spear’s grip, Zillah’s tail stabbed through the drow’s chain mail shirt and burst from his back in a spray of blood and venom.
The soul taker didn’t hesitate to go on the offensive, either. She cast one of her spine-chained daggers like a fisherman launching a hooked line. Her weapon plunged through the throat of an unarmored drow and ripped the arcane syllables from him before he could complete his spell.
I pushed my dungeon farther forward, and its light finally showed me the defenders. There weren’t as many as I’d feared, and I was confident my newly upgraded wahket spear wall could hold off the half-dozen or so warriors that still remained on their feet, but a pair of sorcerers behind the blade wielders worried me.
“Zillah and Delsinia, take out those casters!” I shouted.
Nephket and Kezakazek didn’t wait for the scorpion queen and soul taker to hog all the glory. The sorceress unleashed an acid ball that soared over the heads of the wahket and plunged into the gathered drow beyond them. Nephket stomped on the stirrup of her crossbow and loaded another bolt into her weapon, took careful aim, and unleashed a thrumming quarrel.
For once, my forces had numbers on our sides. There’d been a total of nine drow in the chamber, but we’d taken three of them down. The six that remained upright seemed rattled and confused by what was happening, and most of them sported wounds from our spears and bows. The poor bastards might have been prepared for many dangerous things, but I doubt they ever expected a band of angry cat women would charge through their fancy gate and start poking them full of holes.
Zillah and Delsinia had both shot around the ranks of wahket and landed behind the drow. They converged on one of the two spellcasters, and their combined attacks pulped the drow magic user in the blink of an eye. The second sorcerer raised his hands as if to surrender, but the terrible duo had already started to move toward him. I doubted he’d survive more than a few seconds.
Meanwhile, in the front ranks, the drow swordsmen displayed an impressive flurry of blows, but they couldn’t batter their way through the wahket shields. Their concerted attack sounded like a hailstorm on a tin roof, a steady metallic banging that echoed through the dungeon.
“Pull back!” I shouted into the minds of the wahket.
They held their shields high and took two steps back, just as they’d been trained. The spears in the second rank and the crossbows in the third retreated as well, giving their sisters in the front plenty of room to retreat from the fight safely.
The dark elves foolishly thought they’d cowed the cat women and had gained the upper hand. Their strikes became more reckless, and they spun into the mouth of my dungeon with one leaping, swooping attack after another.
The truth was, I’d wanted their ka, and I couldn’t get it while they were outside my dungeon.
By the time the dark elves realized their mistake, it was far too late for them to back out of the lions’ den they found themselves in.
The front and second ranks of wahket ducked their heads low and thrust their shields forward. The crossbows in the back rank rose to their full height and unleashed a storm of bolts. Four of the missiles struck one drow, and three slammed into the warrior next to him.
The dark elves weren’t slaughtered by the surprise attack—they were too tough for that—but they were certainly rattled by it. The two who’d been wounded by the crossbows threw their arms up defensively, while the rest of the swordsmen threw themselves into a last-ditch attack.
But the instant the dark elves raised their swords to strike, all eight of the spears in the second row of wahket thrust forward over the shoulders of the shields. Chain mail links shattered and drow flesh surrendered to the driving points of the sharpened spears. Blood splashed as the wahket ripped their spears out of the punctured bodies, and the wounded drow cried out in pain.
The front row finished the job with a series of brutally accurate stabs that dropped the wounded dark elves to the ground.
With a shout, the front ranks raised their shields and brought them down hard on the upturned faces of the injured drow. Skulls shattered and dark elf teeth rolled across my dungeon’s floor like handfuls of tossed dice as the wahket finished the battle.
“We thought you might like to talk to one of them,” Zill
ah said.
She and Delsinia had captured the last mage, who looked like he wished he were dead. The soul taker had him wrapped up in her chain and slung over her shoulder like a sack of very sad potatoes. Delsinia tossed the dark elf at my feet, and he landed with a pained groan and a splash of blood from a wound on his forehead.
“Do you wish to question him?” Delsinia asked me.
“You’ll pay for this,” the dark elf gasped. “You’ve made a serious mistake.”
“I’ve made a mistake?” I asked sarcastically. “Me? Listen up, little buddy. I’m not the one who’s fucked up here.”
“You stand at the doorstep of House Jarazikek, you fool,” the drow mage spat. “You are doomed.”
“Not if they’re as weak as you lot were,” Zillah said. She nudged a severed dark elf head with her foot, and it rolled across the floor to face our captive. “How are they coming through?”
“Through the Solamantic Web,” the dark elf said as if explaining why the sky was blue to a toddler.
I really wanted to incarnate and pummel this piece of shit for a while, but I held my temper in check.
“Kezakazek, take half the wahket. Find this web,” I said.
“On it,” the sorceress said. She rattled off a list of wahket names, and her escort formed up behind her. As they walked past our captive, Kezakazek spat on him.
“Why do you betray us, sister?” the drow mage asked the dark elf. “Free me and together we will defeat these fools. Our rewards will be greater than you can imagine.”
Kezakazek froze in her tracks. Then she turned slowly and stalked back over to the chained-up mage.
“Sister?” she asked. A dagger appeared in her hand as if by magic. She crouched down and placed its tip against the mage’s cheek. “You dare call me sister? My family was destroyed by bastards like you. My sister, by blood and oath, was used to death by the Daemonicon Cognate.”
With every word she spoke, she pressed the dagger deeper into the drow’s cheek. Blood squirted from the wound and splashed to the pale stones of my dungeon’s floor.
“You ask why I betray you?” she snarled. “It is because my people betrayed me and mine. You and all of those like you will pay for what you have done.”
With a strangled cry of rage, Kezakazek flayed the drow’s cheek back to the bone. His blood-stained teeth gleamed through the open wound, and crimson foamed through them as he wheezed in pain.
Kezakazek wiped her blade across the back of the drow’s dark hair and stowed it beneath the rags of her clothing.
“We’ll be back soon,” she told me. “Sorry I marked up your prisoner.”
“You’ll pay for that,” the mage said. His words were directed at me, not at Kezakazek. “You’ve ruined one of ours. She would’ve made fine breeding stock if you hadn’t corrupted her mind with your dark magic.”
“I was corrupted long before this dungeon lord saved me from the fires of my own vengeance,” Kezakazek said. “When you get to hell, tell my family that Kezakazek Ekzilizke has not forgotten.”
“Traitor bitch,” the prisoner spat. “You will be fortunate if your family’s fate befalls you after what you’ve done here. Kozerek will feast on your bones, princess. He will delight in bringing an end to your debased line.”
Kezakazek flinched at the word “princess” and stiffened her shoulders. The prisoner had clearly recognized her family’s name, and what he’d said had stung my guardian.
That was enough to make me want to pop the dark elf’s head off right that second, but I held my instincts at bay. He would die, there was no doubt about that, but I needed to squeeze him for information first.
“We’re going to play a little game now,” I said to the drow. “I’m going ask you questions. You’re going to answer them. If you don’t, or if I think you’re lying, I’m going to let my friends hurt you. A lot.”
“Pain means nothing to me,” the drow said. The sentence ended with a high-pitched titter that sounded completely mad. “We are pain. Do your worst. Every minute you waste with me brings you one step closer to meeting my master, and your end.”
“Hurt him,” I said to Delsinia.
I expected her to go to work with her daggers, but the soul taker surprised me. She dropped her knee into the drow’s back and leaned over to put her mouth next to his ear.
“Your kind inflicted much pain on me,” she whispered in a voice choked with rage. “You taught me how to hurt. And now I will teach you.”
Delsinia pressed the tip of one bone dagger to the drow’s exposed teeth. She wormed its blade between two of his molars until the teeth creaked in their sockets.
“I don’t know, man,” I said. “That looks like it’s going to fucking smart. You may want to talk before she gets going.”
The drow sneered, but Delsinia slammed the palm of her free hand onto the dagger’s hilt before he could respond with another of his witty retorts.
The sudden force thrust a full inch of the weapon into the drow’s mouth. The wider section of the blade pushed his teeth apart, and one of the molars sheared off at the gum line to expose the dark thread of its root.
The mage screamed and wriggled under Delsinia, but she held him fast. Blood gushed from his injured mouth and pooled across the floor.
“Okay,” I said. “Now that we’ve established that you’re not quite as much of a badass as you think you are, let’s get back to the game. How many drow can we expect to come through that web?”
“A host,” the mage gasped. Blood splattered out of his mouth with every syllable.
“That sounds like a lot,” I said. “But I need you to be more specific. How many drow in a host? Ten? Fifty? A hundred?”
When he didn’t immediately respond, Delsinia tapped her dagger’s blade against the exposed root of the shattered molar.
The drow screeched in agony and his eyes rolled back into his head. When they finally focused on me, I saw a dread clarity in them. He understood he wasn’t getting out of here alive, but he also understood that he had some choice as to just how badly it would hurt before he was gone.
“A hundred,” he sighed, defeated.
That was not what I expected. A hundred trained warriors and wizards against my team seemed like mighty long odds against us even if I had time to set up another kill chute.
My mind raced as I tried to come up with a plan. A murder maze would help, but it probably wouldn’t be enough to stop the drow, especially if they were as pissed off as Kozerek seemed to be. And the wahket wouldn’t be able to hold a chokepoint forever, especially if Kozerek had enough mages with him.
And a hundred drow were just the start of our problems.
If the drow came through the web and didn’t care for their odds, there was nothing to keep them from retreating and coming back with even more of their buddies. A hundred drow could easily turn into a thousand if we didn’t stop them from calling for reinforcements.
“How do we seal the Solamantic Web?” I asked the drow.
He hesitated until Delsinia stroked her thumb along the tattered edges of the ugly wound Kezakazek had inflicted on him. He shuddered when her nail brushed against the stump of his molar, and the words poured out of him like blood.
“You can’t from this side,” he said. “The only way to close the web is to sever its connection to the gateway within House Jarazikek.”
Delsinia’s eyes flicked to mine, and she gave a short, sharp shake of her head.
I felt the same about going into drow country, but I wasn’t sure we’d have a choice. We couldn’t leave a gateway between Soketra and House Jarazikek if we ever wanted to live in peace. We’d have to go through the web and fuck shit up from that side.
Unless...
If I destroyed the gate after the drow came through, the explosion might be enough to wipe out the bad guys. If I had all of my guardians and worshipers retreat back to the tomb, they’d be safely out of the blast radius. With one kamikaze attack, I could take out all the invading drow
in one fell swoop.
It was a solid plan, but it was not my preferred way to go out of this world.
“It’s time for the bonus round, asshole,” I said to the wounded dark elf. “How do I close the web from the other side?”
The mage hesitated for just a moment, and Delsinia hooked her index finger through the tattered flesh at the end of his wound. She pulled back on his flayed cheek for a long moment, and his cry of pain became a keening wail that seemed like it would never end.
“There is an anchor strand on the far side,” he panted when the soul taker finally released him. “Destroy it, and this section of the web will collapse.”
“How long will it take to collapse?” I asked.
“Once the anchor thread is severed, the connection will unravel,” he said hastily. “I have no idea how long it will take for this area of the web to fall, but at this distance it will not be long.”
Delsinia looked up at me, and I nodded. We weren’t going to get anything else useful out of the prisoner.
Her hand moved like a flash of lightning, and her bone dagger buried itself in the drow’s temple. His eyes bulged from their sockets, his tongue lolled through his ruined cheek, and he died.
<<<>>>
Welcome to Level Five, dungeon lord.
<<<>>>
I took a quick check of the ka vessels on the inside of my arm and found twenty new lights there. Less the two I’d used to maintain my dungeon across dimensions for the past ten minutes, that left me with a total of twenty-seven motes. I wanted to spend some time reviewing the new dungeon lord abilities that were available to me, but I needed to get a better handle on the situation first.
“You broke that one, too,” Zillah said with an exaggerated yawn. “I’m hungry, if no one minds...”
Nephket and the rest of her people looked away, their faces pale.
“Zillah,” I warned. “You know the rules.”
“I know,” she said. “No stuffing my face around the squeamish people. Fine. Can we get on with the killing, at least?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m pretty sure there’s going to be plenty of killing in the very near future.”
