by Nick Harrow
Three of the walls had gone off to perfect effect, which left one to go.
And now it was time for the dangerous part of my plan.
“Okay, kids,” I said to my guardians. “We’ve got the bad guys trapped inside my dungeon with no easy way to retreat. It’s time for part two of the plan.”
“You’re sure this is a good idea?” Nephket asked. “If they reach your core, all of this is for nothing.”
“They’ve got a lot of winding passageway to get through before they reach my core,” I said. “And there is still one big surprise waiting for them before they get there. With any luck, we’ll finish this before they realize what’s happened, and then we can starve them out.”
There were a lot of dubious looks sent my way, and I didn’t blame my guardians for their worry. This was a huge gamble, and if it didn’t go as planned, we were well and truly fucked.
“It’s the only play we’ve got,” I confessed. “We have to see it through.”
Delsinia looked around the Chamber of Bones and Shadows one last time, then lowered one of her bone daggers through the transparent section of its floor.
While the wahket had been safely locked away in the ambush galleries I’d created for them, my guardians and I had hidden in Delsinia’s extra-dimensional pocket right outside the Solamantic Web. Kozerek and his asshole pals had run right below us, completely unaware that the enemy they sought was just a few feet away. The asshole hadn’t even considered we would use Delsinia’s powers to thwart him, and now he was about to pay the price for his stupidity.
Delsinia climbed down the spinal column that bound her daggers together, and the rest of us followed her. I was the last to descend, and Delsinia reclaimed her weapon once my feet touched the ground. It coiled around her waist like an obedient serpent, and the bone knives curved around one another like an ornate buckle.
“In and out,” Kezakazek reminded all of us. “If this web really does drop us into the middle of House Jerazikek, our lives will be in danger from the instant we cross through.”
“We weren’t planning on a sightseeing tour,” Zillah teased. “But your point is well taken. I promise not to eat any drow that does not absolutely need to be eaten.”
That earned a grim chuckle from the rest of us, but I knew whistling past the graveyard when I heard it. This was an incredibly dangerous move on our part, and it could easily end in disaster. I had to move my dungeon into the heart of enemy territory, which would give any drow who found us access to my core.
I raised my hand toward the Solamantic Web and commanded it to open. There was a faint shudder in the air around us as reality warped and twisted, and the strands of the web twisted and churned to form a gateway between Soketra and wherever the fuck the dark elves had come from. A spiral of sparking power spun in midair before us and then faded to reveal an inky black hole in reality.
“Let’s move,” I said.
Zillah leapt through the opening in space and vanished from our sight the instant she crossed its threshold.
I held my breath and waited for her to give us the signal to go ahead. One painful heartbeat after another thudded past for what seemed like an eternity, with no sign of the scorpion queen’s beautiful and savage face.
“All clear!” Zillah shouted as her head reappeared for a split second and then retreated back through the Solamantic Web’s gateway.
I commanded my dungeon to move forward, and the passageway shot toward the darkness. I braced myself for yet another loss of ka to maintain the dungeon across dimensions, but it didn’t happen.
Because my dungeon had stopped at the mouth of the Solamantic Web.
<<<>>>
This territory has been claimed by another dungeon lord.
<<<>>>
“Well,” I snapped. “This fucking sucks.”
“What’s wrong?” Kezakazek asked. “We’re clear. Let’s go.”
“I can’t move the dungeon through the web. There’s another dungeon lord blocking our path,” I said. “Until we can claim the stele that’s in the way, I’m stuck on this side of the portal.”
“Where is the stele?” Nephket asked.
“No idea,” I said. “Probably somewhere close.”
Nephket turned to face me. She reached up, nuzzled her cheeks on either side of my face, and gave me a long, lingering kiss.
“We’ll find it for you,” she said. “Then you can claim it and we can move through and finish this.”
Before I could protest, my guardians vanished through the web and into the drow fortress. A flash of anger passed through my thoughts, and Rathokhetra added his annoyance to it.
That was enough to get me to calm down and remind myself that the guardians had made this move for me. They hadn’t defied me, they were trying to help me.
But what they’d done was still incredibly dangerous. My connection to all of them but Nephket was severed the instant they crossed the web’s threshold. Even the mental ties to my familiar were stretched thin by the distance between us, and her thoughts were distorted by a strange crackle of static.
“Neph,” I sent to her. “Keep in touch. Our connection isn’t solid through the web.”
“See through my eyes,” she called back. “If you start to lose contact, we’ll turn back.”
That was a good idea, and I immediately took Nephket up on the offer.
And wished I hadn’t.
My guardians were in a grand hall of some sort. The floor was made from an enormous slab of polished black stone that emanated a faint purple radiance. An enormous design had been carved into the floor in stomach-churning detail. While Nephket wouldn’t focus on it for any length of time, the scene the drow had created involved some kind of demonic creature with a thousand cock-tipped tentacles. Dozens of those flailing dick whips had found imaginative homes in drow who seemed to be either lost in ecstasy or near death. The rest of the tentacles coiled in the air and dripped gruesome fluids from their bulbous tips onto the upturned faces of the creature’s partners.
Gross.
I turned my attention away from the hentai engraving and back to the drow in my dungeon. They’d entered another chokepoint tunnel, this one littered with fake triggers that I’d crafted by creating floor tiles that didn’t quite sit evenly with their neighbors.
The drow wasted minutes at a time looking for deadly devices that didn’t exist. Every time they found a wobbly tile, the scouts stopped, examined it, and then tried to disarm a trap that didn’t exist. It was slow, tedious work, and it drove their leader to exasperated madness.
Just the way I liked it.
The more time the drow wasted, the more impatient their leader would become. His impatience would cause him to lash out at his underlings, and that would make them careless. If I was very lucky, they would spend the next half hour navigating that chokepoint and, when they didn’t stumble across any real traps, they’d just assume anything else they found was another bluff.
“I don’t think there’s anyone left behind,” Nephket reported back to me. “We haven’t seen a soul, and Zillah says she can’t sense any vibrations that don’t belong to us. We’ve sent the scorpions out to look for any drow who remained behind, but we may be in the clear.”
I wanted to believe my familiar was correct, but I couldn’t. If there was an active stele that meant there was a dungeon lord somewhere nearby. Even if by some miracle the dungeon lord was far away dealing with some other dungeon entirely, he would know that my guardians were in his territory. No dungeon lord would tolerate invaders for long, and it was only a matter of a very short time before whoever owned the stele that blocked my way would send some guardians to find out what the fuck had happened.
“Be careful,” I warned my familiar. “Whoever owns that dungeon knows you’re there. Find the stele. I’ll worry about the rest of this mess.”
Minutes ticked by with interminable slowness. The wahket paced restlessly in the secret rooms I’d created for them. They wanted me to turn
them loose on the drow to slake their bloodlust.
That wasn’t in the cards. The wahket were safe where they were, and I wouldn’t risk any of their lives in a futile battle against a superior force. So far, we’d had the advantage of surprise against our enemies, and I wanted to keep it that way. First-level wahket, even ones as fierce as my worshipers, weren’t a match for a well-armed force of sixth-level drow warriors backed up by a wizard and his cabal of sorcerers.
“Patience,” I told the wahket. “Your time is coming.”
The drow had finally exited the long passage filled with fake traps. Their leader was practically beside himself with rage at that point, and it did my heart good to see him stomping and screaming at his underlings.
“You fools wasted too much time scraping at the floor and found nothing!” he screamed. “I should flay all the scouts and feed them to my dogs.”
“But Lord Kozerek,” one of the scouts lamented. “If we had missed a trap, the consequences would have been catastrophic.”
Kozerek’s eyes narrowed to slits of pure malice. His rage emanated from him like a poisonous stink that made all the drow take a step back.
Too late the scout realized her error. She raised one hand defensively, but Kozerek slapped it aside and glared at her as she shivered in place.
“Peel,” he commanded.
The dark elf began to scream as her body obeyed Kozerek’s command. Streams of blood coursed from beneath her helmet and traveled down her face like gory rivers. The bridge of her nose curled away from the cartilage beneath like a thin slice of peel from a potato. Her cheeks flayed themselves next, and her jaw flopped open as she wailed in agony.
The rest of the drow stared in horror at their comrade as her flesh stripped itself from her bones and slithered out of her armor. Scraps of meat littered the ground around the scout like bloody leaves from an alien tree.
She collapsed into her own gore a few moments later, and her scream withered to a pitiful whimper.
Finally, she went silent.
“Let that be a lesson to the rest of you,” Kozerek barked at the remaining scouts. “We will wait here while you scout ahead. Be quick, be thorough. Do not fail me in this.”
The scouts vanished through an exit on the opposite side of the room while Kozerek and the rest of the troops stood in loose formation. The chamber was a square approximately fifty feet across, and it was boring as hell. The only feature of note was the ceiling, which was almost as tall as the dungeon was wide. Several of the drow had taken note of this oddity, but none of them seemed too concerned about it.
Idiots.
“This place is strange,” Nephket whispered in my thoughts. “Kezakazek claims it wasn’t built by drow. She believes they took it from someone.”
“Probably from the dungeon lord who owns the stele that’s blocking my path,” I said. “Be very, very careful.”
“We are,” Nephket assured me. “But we’ve found nothing to worry about so far.”
That made me wonder if the drow were using the same tactics as I was. Lure your enemies in, let them get comfortable, then drop a ten-ton hammer on their fucking heads before they realized they’re in danger.
I focused my vision on Nephket’s point of view and saw just how right she was. They’d left the grand hall and made their way deeper into the fortress. Instead of a glossy black, this floor was a cracked mess, littered with chunks of stone and mortar like the abandoned toys of an angry child. The walls were covered with tapestries that had once been colorful erotic displays, but the fabric had faded and frayed over the years, and most of the detail was now so moth-eaten and tattered it was hard to tell what was fucking what.
“Looks like an abandoned porn set in a bad part of town,” I thought.
“What is a porn set?” Nephket asked, her curiosity piqued.
I tried to come up with a good way explain porn movies to a cat woman who’d never seen anything remotely like television and hadn’t been around men for the few hundred years leading up to my return. I gave up after a few seconds’ consideration and just sent her a mental image.
“Oh,” she replied. “Looks like something that would appeal to Zillah.”
Satisfied my guardians weren’t in immediate danger of having their throats torn out by some vicious dungeon lord, I returned my senses to The Invading Drow Game Show.
One of the scouts had returned and knelt before Kozerek.
“We have found nothing for fifty feet beyond this chamber,” the dark elf said. “We believe the dungeon lord may not have had time to lay traps deep into his core. I suggest we move the attack force ahead.”
Kozerek furrowed his brow and considered his dilemma. He didn’t believe there weren’t any other traps ahead of us. But if the scouts had returned safely, there was no point in wasting time.
“Very well,” he said. “Return to your brothers and sisters. Continue your exploration. We will move forward.”
The scout nodded and scampered away from Kozerek. I’d have almost felt sorry for the scout if he wasn’t part of the army of fuckstains who wanted to kill me.
“Forward!” Kozerek led his troops across the chamber.
The drow marched in a wide formation meant to maximize their attack power against any foes who might appear, but they faced no enemies.
I waited until the last of them had crossed the chamber’s midpoint and then sprang my last, and best, trap.
“Now,” I said to the wahket.
Nunet rushed to the square red plate I’d placed on the back wall of the ambush gallery. She pushed on the trigger, and it sank into the wall with a faint click.
The wide chamber the drow were halfway across was actually two passages, one above the other. All that separated the top half, where the dark elves were, from the bottom half was a fifty-foot square of five-foot-thick stone.
And that giant chunk of rock was balanced on a single stone brace that ran along its underside, neatly splitting the chamber in half across its width. The western half of the room was much wider and heavier than its eastern half, which would normally have caused it to tilt down into the deep western end of the passage like a seesaw with a fat kid on one seat.
But a single five-foot section of stone wall that jutted horizontally below the western end of the slab held it in place.
The trap that Nunet had triggered caused that final sliding wall to retract. Without that wall to support its weight, the western end of the rotating floor swung down with the speed of a trap door under a gibbet.
The eighty or so drow gathered on the western half of the stone suddenly realized just how badly they’d fucked up.
Kozerek shouted an order to retreat, but it was far too late for that. The drow screamed in confusion as the floor vanished from beneath them and they plummeted thirty feet into the passage below.
Legs shattered as the drow in the front slammed into the stone floor at the bottom of my trap. Kozerek himself ended up on the bottom of the dog pile and cried out in pain as the weight of his army fell on him. More bones broke and the first drow to fall had the air crushed from their lungs by their allies. Dazed and battered by their fall, the drow army lay still at the bottom of my trap.
And then the second half of the trap went off.
The stone slab that had dumped the drow into the lower half of the chamber was thicker on the western end than on its eastern side. When the weight of the drow army slid off the east side of the slab, the much heavier opposite end of the pivoting floor obeyed the law of gravity and slammed back down into its resting place.
With a thunderous crash, the trap sealed the drow into a tidy prison.
“Oh, shit,” I shouted at the fallen drow. The Dungeon Speaks ability lent my voice a weird, warbling echo that made it sound as if it came from somewhere south of the depths of Hell. My words rebounded against the walls of their prison until it sounded like there were a hundred of me shouting at them. “Did you fall down and go boom?”
Their leader’s face h
ad paled to an ashen-gray pallor. His eyes bulged in their sockets, and the red stains of burst blood vessels crawled across their whites.
“I will destroy you,” he howled. His voice cracked as it rose up through the octaves. He sounded more like a madman who’d missed a round of meds than a powerful wizard. “I will tear this place down around your ears and feast on your soul.”
“Seems unlikely,” I said. “You’re trapped down there at the bottom of a pit which I created, and all your friends are on top of you. You’re stuck like bugs in a spider’s web. And speaking of a web, I’m about to shut yours down. Get used to your new digs, Kozerek. They’re your new home.”
“You cannot fathom the forces you are tampering with,” he growled. “The Solamantic Web is not a toy for children like you. You are as likely to destroy yourself as to close the web.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I told him. “Ta-ta for now, spunky.”
With most of the drow army safely out of the way, I turned my attention back to my guardians.
“Any luck?” I asked Nephket.
“Zillah found some weird magical item she insists is a sex toy,” my priestess responded. “But no dungeon lord so far. How are things on your end?”
“Pretty good,” I said. “Most of the bad guys are safe at the bottom of a pit, and I don’t think they’ll get out anytime soon.”
“Whoa,” Nephket said. “I think we might be getting close to the dungeon lord.”
With that, she slowly rotated to give me a good look at their surroundings.
The first thing that hit me was the smell of burned hair. It hung in the air like a poison cloud that clawed at Nephket’s nostrils with every breath she took.
The second thing I noticed was just how big this fucking place was. The hallway that Nephket stood in was close to a hundred feet wide, and it was so long its ends were hidden in deep shadows. Open archways and closed doors lined both sides of the enormous hall, and I counted fifty of each before I ran out of patience.
