by Nick Harrow
While the wahket and the rest of my guardians had no trouble seeing in the dark, all but Kezakazek were equally comfortable in daylight. Even Kez had been away from the cavernous cities of her people for long enough to adapt to bright lights, but the brilliance put the invading dark elves on edge and left them squinting and groaning as they advanced.
“Something’s happened while we were gone,” the first dark elf through the web shouted back to those who’d yet to cross over. Because the scout was in my dungeon I understood him perfectly, but the response back was a twisted lot of nonsense in the harsh-consonant language of the dark elves.
“What did they say?” I asked Kezakazek.
“Whoever’s calling the shots on the other side had trouble and instructed the scout to move ahead,” she said. “There was also something about an extra bounty for your head.”
That made sense, and it played into my plans. I hoped, really hoped, that the drow leader would be so pissed I’d killed off some his underlings that he’d throw everything he had at us rather than play it safe with a scouting party. I kept my fingers crossed as the lead drow nodded back to his commander and then charged forward.
He was followed by a big old bunch of his buddies. Where the drow we’d seen so far wore chain mail or studded leather armor, these kids came ready for war. Their heads were protected by black helmets that covered their eyes with slats of metal but left their lower jaws exposed. The helmets sloped back from their crowns and gave the elves a sleek, predatory profile that reminded me a lot of the Xenomorphs from the Alien movies.
Ornate, surprisingly flexible plate armor covered the rest of the invaders’ bodies. The armor was emblazoned with raised runes and strange sigils that made my eyes water, and a kaleidoscopic shimmer of particolored lights formed an aura that clung tightly to their outlines.
The drow had also switched up their weapons. Instead of nimble shortswords, these assholes wielded longer blades and heavier crossbows that looked like they could punch through a shield if they landed a square hit. These boys and girls weren’t scouts, they were the real deal war host.
“Contact,” I thought to all of my guardians and worshipers. My guardians were with me, but my worshipers were tucked away at the mouth of a new kill chute that I’d thrown together.
Time was ticking. I had two ka left and would lose one of those in the next few minutes. If the drow got their asses in gear, maybe the wahket would earn me more life juice before my core ran dry and everything unraveled around us.
When they didn’t face any immediate threats, the drow warriors formed up just outside the web. Their leader shoved his way to the front to get a good look at his boys and girls and survey the situation for himself.
The drow army was split roughly half-and-half between males and females, though the five mages at the rear of the formation were all males.
I counted thirty dark elves on our side of the web, but through the open portal the wavering outlines of far more came into view. Those who had gathered in my dungeon looked eager for battle, and their cruel eyes glinted like chips of broken glass through their visors. The dark elves we’d slaughtered had been rookies; these were seasoned vets who hungered for blood and knew all the tricks to wring it out of their enemies.
<<<>>>
Drow Dragoon, 6th-level, 80 hit points
Kozerek Jarazikek, 7th-level Drow Wizard, 37 hit points
<<<>>>
I tried to squeeze more information out of my dungeon lord vision, but even though these dickheads were in my territory, I couldn’t get anything further.
“Your senses are limited when used against creatures more powerful than your dungeon,” Rathokhetra piped up from the back of my brain. “You’ll have to weigh their strengths by other means.”
I didn’t have any other means at my disposal, so I stared hard at the bad guys to see if that helped.
Kozerek wore little armor, but I knew that didn’t mean he was defenseless. He practically glowed with all the magical auras that surrounded him, and I was positive he had a whole grimoire’s worth of defensive wards woven into his loose-fitting clothes. The pair of swords he wore across his back looked just as heavily enchanted, and I wondered what kind of nasty tricks they carried.
With any luck, he’d be dead before I got up close and personal with those blades.
“This is the domain of another upstart dungeon lord,” the drow shouted to his men, but mostly for my benefit. “He has slain your brethren. He has destroyed our property. He has freed our slaves. For that, he will pay the price.”
The gathered troops slammed their swords into their gauntleted hands and unleashed a battle cry that seemed a little shrill to my ear. Sure, they looked tough, but I couldn’t shake the impression that drow didn’t have the grit of my wahket. They seemed a bit too twiggy, despite their beefy hit points.
“If you are listening, dungeon lord, know this,” Kozerek bellowed. “House Jarazikek sends their finest to deal with you. You will not be slain. Your core will not be emptied. You will spend the rest of your miserable existence as the slave of our House. Your punishment will never end, though you will beg for your life to be extinguished.”
“I’m gonna skull fuck him with my stinger,” Zillah whispered in my ear. “In front of all his little toy soldiers. I’ll jab it in his eyehole and pump him so full of my death juice his skull will explode.”
Though I wanted Zillah to do exactly that if she got the chance, now was not the time to leap to the attack. The drow outnumbered us and had tricks I didn’t know how to counter. We needed surprise on our side if this was going to work.
“Not yet,” I cautioned the scorpion queen. “We have a plan, and we need to stick to it. There are twice as many of these assholes on their way through the web. That’s not a fight we can win without serious losses.”
“We’ll respawn,” Zillah started. She was eager to get into the fight, and I didn’t blame her. “Then we’ll hit them again. I don’t mind death for a cause as just as this one.”
“Anunaset won’t,” I said. “Neither will Nunet. Or any of the wahket. Do you want the blood of the wahket on your hands?”
“I didn’t mean—” Zillah said.
“I know,” I cut her off abruptly. “But we need to keep our emotions in check. We can beat them, but not if we fly off the handle.”
My guardians all nodded at my words, and I felt a momentary pang of regret at how harsh I’d been. But the guilt vanished almost as soon as it had appeared because I was right. There was no room for emotion here, no leeway for anyone to go rogue and attack too soon.
Kozerek had finished his little speech and marched out of the room. I’d left a wide-open passage for the drow to travel down. I wanted them to get confident. The corridor they followed twisted around one corner, and then another, but it was still plenty wide for them to walk five abreast with Kozerek out in front.
After a good hundred feet of twists and turns, though, the passage narrowed. The walls angled in to form a single five-foot-wide passage. Kozerek paused there as if he’d realized that he might have been played. His entire force was inside my dungeon now, and they’d reached a point where turning back wouldn’t be as simple as entering.
Suddenly cautions, Kozerek motioned to one of the women next to him, and she stepped out in front of him. The dark elf removed her helmet to get a better look at the floor ahead of her and crept forward in a low crouch.
“That’s what I thought, you fucking coward,” I muttered to myself.
Kozerek was a big, tough asshole when there were no threats present, but he wasn’t willing to put his own neck on the line if he thought I had strewn some traps on the path ahead.
That was all according to my plan.
The dark elf who’d been volunteered continued forward at a snail’s pace. She tried to look confident, but fear radiated off her like heat waves from a Texas highway in July. She knew her boss suspected trouble, and that’s why she’d been given the lead. To Kozere
k, this woman was expendable, and now she knew it.
<<<>>>
Ka maintenance cost: 1 mote. Caution, only one mote remains in your core.
<<<>>>
My stomach wrapped itself into a knot at the red announcement that flashed across my vision. In five minutes, I’d run out of ka. And five minutes after that, I wouldn’t be able to maintain my dungeon on my side of the portal, and we’d be fucked. I willed the drow scout to move faster before my plan collapsed.
Ten feet beyond the chokepoint, the unwilling scout’s foot came down on a trigger plate before she saw it. The section of the floor her foot had landed on sank an inch before it stopped with an audible click. By that point, the rear end of the drow train was a good sixty feet beyond the Solamantic Web and inside my dungeon.
Which is why none of them heard the trap their scout had just triggered.
At the same instant the drow scout had tromped on the trigger plate, a thick stone wall shot across the first corner in the tunnel that led away from the Solamantic Web. The drow had sealed their only escape route from my dungeon.
“That is so sneaky,” Kezakazek said when she saw what the trap had done. “I mean, really. That is pretty devious for a non-drow.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” I said.
Delsinia grinned at that and clutched her bone daggers tighter. Her eyes glowed like a pair of emerald flames surrounded by deep shadows. The smile that split her face was homicidal in its intensity, and even I found her readiness to slaughter these dark elves unnerving. She had a lot of revenge stored up, and she looked ready to let it all out.
Of course, I couldn’t blame her. These fuckers had tortured and enslaved her. Whatever she did to them when I turned her loose would be far less than they deserved.
A quick survey of the drow in my dungeon told me we were looking at mostly sixth-level warriors, with five sixth-level sorcerers brought along for fire support. At seventh-level, Kozerek was a ball of hurt just waiting to bounce, and I hoped we took him down before he had a chance to use any of the deadly toys in his arsenal.
All I had was my cunning, some first-level wahket spear wielders that were outnumbered four to one, and a quartet of kickass guardians ready to snap off the heads of a bunch of dark elves and drink their blood.
Well, Nephket probably wouldn’t drink their blood, but she’d be down for the killing.
When there were no explosions and no spikes burst from the walls to impale the scout, she shrugged and continued along the narrow passage. After another thirty feet the tunnel opened into a fifteen-foot-wide corridor, took a hard right turn, and then continued for another fifty feet.
“All clear,” she called back.
This is where she’d made a terrible mistake.
The rest of the drow followed her and also didn’t run into any trouble. They made their way down the length of the narrow five-foot-wide corridor in a single-file staggered formation spaced out so there were no more than twenty of their number in that choked passage at a time.
I held my breath and waited patiently for the drow to filter through the chokepoint, and my pulse hammered in my veins as the bulk of their forces gathered in the wider passageway beyond it. I wanted to spring the trap, because I was down to a single minute before my ka went to zero, but I held fast.
Finally, when only the last twenty of the dark elves remained in the narrowest part of the passage and my last mote of ka was consumed, I gave the order.
“Now!” I shouted to the wahket.
The cat women were hidden in narrow galleries that ran alongside the final stretch of claustrophobic hallway. The two that I’d chosen earlier stomped down on the trap triggers I’d placed inside the galleries. Stone walls slid into place on either end of the killing tunnel and trapped the tail end of the drow force.
The isolated dark elves shouted in surprise and looked around for enemies. Too late, they saw the narrow holes in the wall that had been hidden by stone plugs the wahket had pushed out when the trap had been sprung.
With a thunderous roar, the cat women struck at the invaders.
The dark elves shrieked in surprise and agony. Though their plate mail turned aside many spear thrusts, the drow were in too close quarters to adequately defend themselves. They twisted and turned, but there was no escape from the weapons of the bloodthirsty wahket.
The wahket angled their spears through weak joints, the chain mail that covered the drow’s armpits, and any other critical points they could find. Sweat poured down their savage faces and dripped from their chins as they continued the relentless assault on their enemies.
For the first time, the wahket were not fighting for me. They fought because it was who they were. They fought for the memory of the ancestors the whole world had feared. And they fought because every death brought them closer to reclaiming that former glory.
Outside the trap, Kozerek howled and raged at his troops.
“How did you miss that trap?” he screamed at the scout he’d forced to take the lead.
“There was no trap!” she protested and caught Kozerek’s stinging backhand as a reward.
Inside the trap, the twenty drow screamed as the spears took their toll. The dark elves took a lot of killing with all those hit points, and they suffered every second as the wahket whittled their numbers down.
Four minutes had passed since I’d last paid the maintenance cost on my extended dungeon. There were only sixty seconds left before the dungeon would collapse and all my hard work would be for nothing.
“Kill them,” I commanded the wahket. “Now!”
Kozerek shouted for his troops to move the sliding walls and rescue their brothers and sisters. The warriors threw themselves into action, but even their combined strength wasn’t enough to budge the stone from its position.
Finally, one of the drow fell. Then another. And another. Motes of ka flickered into my core, and I let out a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding. The first mote winked out almost as quickly as it had appeared.
We’d been within seconds of disaster, but the wahket had turned the tide. My heart soared with pride at their efforts. Soon enough, the last of the drow in the kill chute had been slaughtered. They’d never had a chance. Forty motes of ka appeared in my core, but more importantly, all the wahket engaged in that battle had earned enough experience to increase their sterngth.
<<<>>>
Wahket Warrior
Medium humanoid
Armor Class: 15 (Chain Shirt)
Hit Points: 45 (6d8 + 18)
Speed: 30 feet, climb 20 feet
STR: 12 (+1)
DEX: 17 (+3)
CON: 16 (+3)
INT: 10 (+0)
WIS: 10 (+0)
CHA: 11 (+0)
Skills: Perception +4, Stealth +6
Senses: Darkvision, Passive Perception 10
Languages: Common
Challenge: 3
Actions
Leonine Lunge: The wahket warrior can double her speed for one movement action. Once this trait has been used, the wahket warrior cannot use it again until she does not move for six seconds.
Claws: Unarmed Strike: +5 to hit, reach 5 feet, one target. Hit: 6 (1d6+3) slashing damage.
Spear: Melee Strike: +5 to hit, reach 10 feet one target. Hit: 6 (1d6+3) piercing damage.
Shield Wall: When ranked up in a row at least 3 wide and equipped with shields, the wahket have an Armor Class of 20. The wahket in the shield wall may only make attacks with their spears and suffer a -2 penalty to hit and damage with those attacks.
Other wahket may attack over the shield wall with spears and receive a +2 bonus to hit and damage with those attacks.
<<<>>>
I didn’t have time to admire the new and improved wahket, but what I saw was most impressive. Our days of a shield wall defense would probably be at an end now that the wahket could do so much more damage with their claws without giving up much in the way of defense. A slow grin split my face as I imagine
d the drow charging into battle and the wahket’s claws slicing the faces off our foes.
“How does it feel?” I asked Kozerek in a voice that boomed through every corner of my dungeon. “How does it feel to stand by as your people are torn apart? Their blood will be on your hands, Kozerek.”
Kozerek threw back his head and howled in frustration. The outburst didn’t faze his troops, who didn’t so much as cover their ears or flinch when he unloaded his rage at no one in particular. The soldiers and mages all stood very still because none of them wanted to be singled out for their commander’s wrath.
“I will have your core, dungeon lord,” Kozerek growled. “I will chain you to me for all eternity. When I’ve grown bored with you, you will beg to lick the filth from the soles of my feet for a moment’s escape from the torment you will endure. You will plead with me to be fed alive to the hounds.”
“Big talk, little man,” I said. “But you still have to get to my core. I’m not sure you’ll make it that far, even if you could find it.”
“Find it?” he laughed. “You fool. You cannot hide your core from me. I sense it even now.”
“Sure, sure, Chuckles,” I taunted the dark elf commander. “You keep right on telling yourself that you know everything while my girls trick your soldiers and carve them into steaks to eat later.”
The drow didn’t waste any time on one of his witty retorts or temper tantrums. He drew his swords from their scabbards and stalked ahead of his troops. He was pissed as hell, which is exactly what I wanted to see. The more furious he got, the more likely he was to make a mistake.
And I really, really needed him to make a mistake. I’d whittled away a good chunk of his troops, but he still had all of his sorcerers and most of his swordsmen. And while it would take him a good long while to make his way to my core, I had no doubt Kozerek knew exactly where it was. I’d left it exposed on my cobra throne for just that reason.
“Keep coming,” I thought. “Just keep coming, you arrogant piece of shit.”
Because I hadn’t had enough ka to lay in a real death trap filled with brutal traps, I’d settled on what I hoped was a clever use of four sliding walls. I’d also moved the triggers for the sliding walls away from the walls themselves, including hiding three of them inside the wahket’s ambush galleries, to minimize the chances of the drow finding them.
