The Dungeoneers

by John David Anderson

  And to think, all Tye Thwodin had to keep people from his mountains of gold was a lock on the door.

  And a castle full of dungeoneers.

  12

  THE ICING ON THE ROLL

  Over the next five days, Lena insisted they ramp up their training, spending the entirety of every evening in a secluded corner of the library debating team dynamics or out on the castle grounds running mock engagements with all manner of imagined creatures. They battled pretend monsters and fell to imaginary wounds so that Serene could treat them with invisible elixirs. Quinn spent long hours casting minor spells while the others did their best to distract him, screaming for him to hurry or sneaking up behind him (though admittedly they only tried that once). When Serene and Quinn broke off to practice blessings and curses, Lena made Colm draw Scratch and defend himself against her ever-more-fervent onslaught. The results were often more scratches, and some bruises the size of Fungus’s biscuits, not to mention stiff fingers from gripping the handle so hard that it made it almost impossible to pick locks the next day.

  Nor were they the only ones. Everywhere he looked, Colm saw clusters of dungeoneers huddled together, whispering and plotting. He could hear them behind the closed doors of training rooms after hours, bellowing commands and beating on one another. Fellow trainees who used to at least nod in acknowledgment when Colm passed in the halls now cast their eyes downward and kept their distance. They were all part of Tye Thwodin’s grand enterprise, members of the same glorious legion—but for the days leading up to the trials, at least, every party was on its own.

  The only group Colm didn’t see squeezing in extra practice was Tyren’s. While Colm and Lena dueled and Serene identified herbs and Quinn practiced his elocution, Tyren’s party simply sat on the side and laughed or walked by shaking their heads. Perhaps they didn’t need to train. They had the most talent, after all; the only talent, though more often than not, Ravena wasn’t even with them, and if she was, she usually hid behind one of her books.

  “Why is she even with them, do you think?” Colm wondered.

  It was the evening before the trials, and they were all seated around one of the circular wooden tables in the creature archives of the library, going over the literally thousands of possible monstrosities Herren Bloodclaw might throw into his dungeon to torment them. It was well known that the goblin kept a wide array of pets to be used in the trials, only a few of which they’d been formally introduced to.

  “It’s like your family. You don’t get to choose,” Lena said. “Quinn and I didn’t choose you. Or Serene. Not that we’re complaining. Ravena must have gotten tossed in with them.”

  “Not that she even needs them,” Quinn mumbled.

  “One person who is good at everything still can’t compete with four people who are each great at their thing, whatever their thing is,” Serene said.

  “I’m pretty fantastic at eating,” Quinn concluded.

  “See,” Lena said. “If we ever get trapped in a dungeon made of pastries, we will be set.”

  “I’m not sure dessert monsters are what Renny has in mind,” Colm said. Then he opened the book in front of him—Blandburg’s Bestiary, Volume Three: Denizens of the Deep—and began quizzing the others on how they would best subdue any number of horrible creatures. “Poisonous pus bug!”

  “Fireball,” Quinn said.

  “Paralyzing potion,” Serene suggested.

  “Stab it,” Lena answered.

  Colm flipped to another random page, pressed down with his finger. “Raging flame troll?”

  “Frost ray?” Quinn offered.

  “Blessing of fire resistance.”

  “Stab it,” Lena said.

  “Wandering behemoth.”

  “Oh gods, I don’t know, death fog? Forget it. I don’t know how to cast death fog. How about Balustrade’s magic bullet?”

  “Protection from stone turning. Or stone form. Or form turning,” Serene fumbled.

  “Stab it,” Lena concluded.

  Colm found a good one. “Gigantic plated dungeon maggot.”

  “What the heck is that?” Quinn asked. “Is there a picture? You know what? Don’t show me.”

  Serene shuddered. “Protection from disgusting things?” she ventured.

  “Flip it over,” Lena said. “Then stab it.”

  “All right,” Colm said. “How about this: three . . . headed . . . dragon.”

  They all looked at him.

  “Run,” Lena said.

  That night, after running through seventy more possible creatures they might encounter (Lena’s solutions ranging from “stab it” to “knock it unconscious and then stab it”) and an exchange of nervous see-you-in-the-mornings, Colm carefully unpacked and repacked his bag, making sure he had everything he needed for the trials and some things he probably didn’t. He had to remind himself that he wasn’t going down there alone. He had Lena to protect him. And Serene to bless and heal him. And Quinn to catch them all on fire and to eat anything suspicious. He looked over at the mageling, contentedly snoring.

  The trouble with counting on people wasn’t trusting them to do what was necessary, Colm thought. It was knowing they were trusting you to do the same.

  He lay in bed and thought of Felhaven. Right now his sisters would all be asleep. All except for Celia, who might have slipped out into the kitchen to read by the last embers of the fire. Perhaps his father was still in the barn, mending a split heel or trimming a wolf pelt to line the cuff of a boot for some noblewoman who insisted on showing off. Maybe his mother was looking out the window at the only road out of town, waiting for Colm to just appear from nowhere. But thoughts of home only made him more nervous, so instead he tried to remember all the different kinds of bats he was likely to encounter—brown, screeching, vampire, giant, spear-nosed, giant vampire, hammerhead, skeletal, giant screeching vampire—and how each one might go about killing him and he likewise.

  In most cases, “stab it” seemed to work just fine.

  The morning that the trials were to begin, the dining hall was gravely quiet. Parties sat at separate tables, as usual, but now each group was huddled together in confidence, speaking just above a whisper. Quinn was already demolishing his breakfast when Colm entered. Fungus had outdone himself for once. While the stew looked to be little more than sausage soaked in water, it was accompanied by heaping platefuls of sticky rolls, powdered in cinnamon and then topped with hills of icing. His talents as a baker far surpassed his abilities as a cook.

  “That looks good,” Colm said, pointing to the roll on Quinn’s plate, which was easily the largest at the table and had icing piled twice as high as any of the others.

  “I know. It was just sitting there. Calling to me. I call it the Roll of Destiny.” The mageling’s eyes grew large as he sank his teeth into it. He grunted in ecstasy.

  Colm smiled and grabbed a pastry of his own as he took the seat next to Serene. There was still one empty seat. “Training hall?” he asked, nodding toward the Lena-less space.

  “Training hall,” the other two answered, then Serene added, “She said to eat without her.”

  “Mission accomplished,” Quinn remarked, his face smeared with icing. Colm noticed quite a bit of it had dripped onto his robes and the collar of his tunic.

  “Aren’t you the least bit nervous?” Colm asked.

  “I eat when I’m nervous,” Quinn muttered through crumbs. “Could explain why I’m always hungry.”

  Colm was reaching for a second roll to keep in reserve when a fat, brown, hairy spider scurried across his plate. Colm jerked his hand back, nearly smashing the creature with his palm before remembering. He turned and gave Serene a dirty look.

  “Mr. Tickletoes is hungry too,” she said. But Colm was pretty sure spiders didn’t eat cinnamon buns.

  “Let me guess. He’s coming with us.”

  “He’s just as much a dungeoneer as you or me,” Serene said. “Plus he can see in the dark.” Colm was about to say something about
getting easily squished under bootheels when he noticed several dozen heads turning to the entry.

  There, standing beneath the archway leading to the great hall, was a walking armory.

  Lena Proudmore strode into the dining hall, clanking with every step, the links in her silver armor singing to one another. What parts of her weren’t covered in steel were garnished with weapons. Her sword rode at her left hip, of course, but a shorter version of it sat astride the right. Two throwing axes hung from her waist in front, and a dagger was somehow clipped to the gauntlet on each hand. The only part of her that wasn’t armored or edged was her head. Helmets were for scaredy knights and milksops, she always insisted. She was a barbarian—and the look in her eye was pointed enough to impale everyone in the room three times over. She made her way to the table and awkwardly managed to squeeze into her seat. Serene scooted to give her some space. Lena looked them all over, pausing, assessing. She pointed to Scratch at Colm’s side.

  “That’s it?”

  Colm nodded. “I’ve also got a knife in my bag,” he added. “And a hairpin.” Compared to her, he felt naked. She could probably slay creatures with a hug. “You planning on using all of those at once?”

  Lena gave him a condescending look. “It’s important to have a backup plan.”

  “It’s the same plan,” Colm said. “Just a slightly different way of carrying it out.”

  “So I was thinking,” Serene interrupted. “We should have a name. Nothing official, of course, just something for us.”

  Lena slammed a gauntleted fist on the table. “That’s a great idea. We could call ourselves Lena’s Legion. You know, like Thwodin’s Legion. Only better.”

  Quinn dropped his last bite of roll, getting even more frosting on his sleeve.

  “How about Quinn’s Questors?” he countered.

  “Or Serene’s Soldiers? No. I don’t like the sound of that. Serene’s Saints. That’s better.”

  Colm watched as Serene’s pet spider skittered back across the table and up her arm.

  He suddenly had an idea.

  “What about Team Tickletoes?” he said.

  Serene clapped her hands. Quinn shrugged. Lena said that it was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.

  “Tickletoes? How are you supposed to make somebody’s blood curdle with a name like that? Why not the Blood Guzzlers? Or the Orc Slayers, or the Ferocious Foursome?”

  “All in favor of Team Tickletoes?” Colm said. He, Serene, and Quinn raised their hands.

  “Fine—just don’t tell anyone else. I’ll never live it down.”

  “Tell anyone else what?”

  Colm turned to see Tyren, Minx, and Vala in full smirk. He looked around for Ravena but couldn’t find her. Probably in the training hall too. Or already in the dungeon, tackling it without the rest of her party. He wouldn’t blame her.

  Lena spun around. “How’s the ear? CAN YOU HEAR ME OKAY?” she shouted.

  Tyren reached self-consciously to his scabbed-over ear, then looked at Quinn, robes covered in crumbs. “Enjoying your breakfast? You’re going to need your energy if you hope to come in second.”

  “I don’t care how we do, just so long as we don’t have to go down after you,” Lena fired back. “That dungeon smells bad enough as it is.” The two locked eyes, seeming to size each other up, deciding how far to push it. Then Tyren broke it off and turned to go, but not before pointing at Quinn and touching his own chin.

  “You missed some,” he said.

  Quinn wiped the frosting from his chin on his sleeve. “I don’t care if we win, so long as we beat those guys,” he said, glaring after them.

  The bells up in the tower rang, and everyone in the dining hall froze.

  It was time.

  Colm followed the others into the great hall, where a small stage had been set up at one end. A thickly woven black-and-red carpet covered half of the stage, the masters covering the other half. Herren Bloodclaw stood next to Tye Thwodin, on a wooden pedestal so that he could easily be seen, though the founder still dwarfed him. Colm saw Finn standing on the end, as usual. The rogue was cleaning his nails with his knife.

  “I don’t feel so good,” Quinn mumbled, one hand clutched over his stomach.

  “It’s just nerves,” Colm told him.

  “No. Seriously. I think I ate too much.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  Quinn nodded meekly as they pushed themselves toward the front of the crowd of close to a hundred young dungeoneers, all clustered in their respective parties, each one waiting for the chance to win Tye Thwodin’s mystery prize. As the hall filled, Master Thwodin rubbed his stomach appreciatively.

  “First off, I’d like to thank Fungus for that delicious breakfast. I could almost identify the meat in the stew this morning. But today poses an even greater challenge—one that will help us see who is most prepared for this noble profession. To explain the rules, let me turn this over to the keeper of the dungeon himself.”

  Beside Colm, Quinn groaned again. “It’s not even a real dungeon,” Colm whispered to him. “It’s only a test. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  The goblin stomped on his stool to get everyone’s attention.

  “Listen up, you pox-livered, pale-faced goblin killers. As far as you’re concerned, this is a real dungeon. It’s got traps. It’s got monsters. It’s got dead ends and drops and locks and everything else you’re likely to find out there. And somewhere in this dungeon is a chest. Find the chest, grab the treasure, and get out. Returning without what’s inside the chest results in failure. Each team has two glasses’ worth of sand to complete the dungeon. And don’t think I’m going to go easy on you just because half of you are greener than your own snot. There’s still goblin blood in these veins, and nothing gives me quite such a thrill as watching one of you lose a finger to a trap I devised.”

  Colm looked at his own hands, then over at Finn.

  “Thank you, Renny—” Master Thwodin said, but the goblin wasn’t finished.

  “And don’t come whining to me when it’s over saying that it was too hard or it was unfair, because there’s nothing fair about any of it. It’s not fair your kind going in and stealing our gold in the first place, and it’s not fair me getting kicked out of my clan and having to come work for you meat sacks. And it’s certainly not fair how much taller you are, or how I have to put up with the smell of your—”

  Master Thwodin placed a hand over the goblin’s face, shutting him up, then looked over the crowd of dungeoneers. “Do we have any volunteers?”

  As soon as he said it, Colm knew what was coming. He quickly reached across Quinn and tried to pull her arm down, but it was too late. Lena’s hand was already dancing above her.

  “Very well, Miss Proudmore. Bring your team up.”

  “Seriously, I d-d-don’t feel right at all,” Quinn whispered. Colm gave Lena a dirty look, but she ignored him, striding toward the makeshift stage, pausing only to glare mockingly at Tyren. Colm followed her up the stairs and onto the velvet rug, facing the masters.

  “Since you were brave enough to volunteer to go first,” Master Thwodin said, “I’m going to give you all a piece of advice. . . .”

  Colm stole a glance at Finn, who nodded. Or maybe he looked down at the floor. Colm instinctively reached out and took Lena’s hand. It was cold and half covered in metal, but it comforted him anyway.

  “Watch the first step. It’s a doozy.”

  Master Thwodin gave a short tug on his beard. Herren Bloodclaw stepped off his stool.

  And Colm felt the rug give out beneath them.

  The velvet carpet careened down an angled slab of smooth stone, with the four of them clutching it with white-knuckled ferocity. In between Quinn’s screams, Colm could hear some of Lena’s armor scraping against the rock as they plummeted into the darkness, though it did little to slow her down. They weren’t going to slow down, Colm thought. They were only going to stop. Abruptly. At the end.

  The ground ca
me up quickly to meet them, and all four of them tumbled over one another, somehow getting tangled up in the rug. Colm felt something jabbing him in the side and assumed it was one of Lena’s pointier parts. He pulled something out of his mouth, realized it was Serene’s hair, and then noticed Quinn’s face was squished under his armpit.

  “Wffff wrrf frf fwff.”

  Colm managed to untangle himself and stand up, then pulled Quinn to his feet.

  “I said, when’s the last t-time you had a b-b-bath?”

  Colm didn’t answer; he was too busy watching Lena roll around on the cold stone floor of the dungeon, her armor and weapons making it impossible for her to stand on her own. She looked like a flipped beetle.

  “Are you just going to stand there and watch?” she sniped. The three of them worked together to pull her to her feet. “I hadn’t planned on getting knocked down,” she explained.

  “Always the optimist,” Colm said. He looked around. The guild’s practice dungeon seemed much the same as it had the first time they were all there. The air still carried the tang of moss and mold, and prickled with cold. They stood in a gray hallway stretching off in four different directions leading into four interminable shadows, except this time the only light came from the dim circle above them, illuminating the long stone slide that had led them here—a dim circle that slowly disappeared as the trapdoor above closed, leaving them in almost total darkness. Colm could barely see his four fingers held in front of him.

  “I don’t suppose anyone thought to bring a torch,” Lena remarked.

  “No, but we do have more weapons than we could possibly hope to hold,” Serene said.

  “Hang on, g-g-guys. I g-g-got this,” Quinn said. The mageling took a deep breath and rubbed his hands together. Colm instinctively took a step away from the sound of Quinn’s voice. He trusted Quinn, but a rogue’s got rules. Quinn muttered something under his breath.