by Marty Myers
It wasn’t all darkness he found bleeding into his mind and soul though. He also found many of memories of the dwarf surfacing in his mind. He had known so much more than the stone masonry that he was killed for. Mining, prospecting, smithing, jewel crafting, and a host of other talents and skills that he had practiced in his lifetime. As a young dwarf, he had been trained in the warriors’ bachelor hall. He had stood many watches for his hall and hold and had raised an ax in times of war against goblin incursions. He had killed the foe that came looking for dwarvish blood. As well there were many good times in the dwarven halls beneath the mountains, raising tankards of ale at his brother’s wedding, singing at festivals and holy days. Holding the newborn babes that were his nephews a few years later, having a sweetheart of his own that he had intended to ask to marry him etc. which came to Hank as he set there remembering during a brief break.
Later they were working on the second level and Hank was passing himself through the stone to see if there would be any problems with his floor plan when he unexpectedly came across a vein of quartz with some gold in it. It wasn’t a particularly large deposit but thinking of the dwarfs memories he decided to collect it anyway. He floated through the vein and embedded his essence in the vein and then focused on pouring more of his essence down to flow through just the gold. When it felt like he was in touch with it all he teleported just the gold out which he thought was a neat trick others would sorely like to have. From here on out, he looked for and removed any useful metals and minerals he came across as he went through the stone claiming his dungeon space and shaping it to his liking. Then he set it aside for working later in a small space and got back to business.
Once he was done cutting out all the halls, rooms and passages of the second floor he realized he still needed to find a source of water for his sunken hallway or to haul it in somehow. He scryed and searched about until he found a small spring a bit further up the pass that might do. He stretched himself mightily and was able to just barely reach it. Then he carefully carved a small channel leading from the spring to the tunnel he intended to flood and let it begin to seep down. He also set up a couple spots where he could seal or unseal the channel to control the flow of water in case in time it did more than fill the tunnel he wanted submerged. Now he just needed pitch or tar for the ceiling and a few metal pieces for the traps and the upper floors of the dungeon would be ready he thought in satisfaction.
Hank decided he had built enough for the moment and turned instead to studying his necromancy after thinking what he wanted to learn to do next he chose one of the more complex bone incantations and managed to make his first Bone Golem out of three of the regular skeletons. It was almost twice the height of a man due to him giving it twice the extra vertebrae and ribs of a man and making it with four arms. The two extra skulls went in place on its knees to guard them and to bite anyone who got too close. He supplied it with the extra leg and rib bones providing it more weight and armor. He also tried crafting four stone clubs with sharp spikes at the ends for it to use against the heroes. He used discarded stone from their quarrying and tried using what little earth magics he possessed to strengthen the clubs. After a while, he thought he succeeded. Then he put the golem in the Last room on the second floor kind of like a mini-boss to lead the regular skeletons.
Alastor also managed to cast the spell after a few more tries and made his bone golem more like a centipede with all the vertebrae and ribs connected in a single line and all three sets of arms and hands running down the sides. Then he sharpened all the ribs and vertebrae edges and points and even sharpening and shaping spikes and thorns on them inside and outward so they would rip and tear even if they just passed by someone. He gave it no head as such but made the ribs hinged so they could open or close on someone like the jaws of a giant beast. They tested it out and the thing was really fast. He put it in the hall of many columns on the second floor because he thought the low ceiling and columns would give it an advantage hunting the heroes there.
The Darkness was still down in the Alter room and so was Provoas, and Hank so didn’t want to disturb them but he did want to finish the top floors off since they were so close to completion. “ Alaster how is your teleport range recovering?” “ I don’t really know yet,” Alaster said. “I can feel it getting back closer to normal but the furthest I have tried it out is down to the farm in the valley below earlier when we were mucking out the cellar. Why do you ask.” “ Well we almost have this floor finished,” Hank replied. “There are only a few more things we need for it to be ready for company. Who knows how long Provoas is going to be downstairs with the Darkness so if we can somehow gather the tar ourselves or find some of those fish I was talking to Provoas about it would get us that much closer to done.” “ Well there are a few rivers not too far from here where some aggressive toothy fish similar to what you were talking about might be found,” Alastor said. “ I don’t know if I have the range for that yet or if I could find them with my new weird teleport ability.” “ No time like the present to find out,” Hank said with a gleam in his eye. “If we can find those fish we can also practice our preservation spells and try out making some zombies,” Hank said, “so fire her up.” Alaster just gave him a look at the unusual turn of Earth phrase and began concentrating.
After a few minutes, he said, “ Hank I feel like I have the range back, but I can’t seem to find the fish good enough to teleport them.” Hank suggested he cast a scrying to try to pinpoint them and they both proceeded to simulcast the spell with Alaster leading the search since he had been to the river before and also knew what the fish they were looking for looked like. A few minutes later they had found two of them. They were big fishes looking around 4 to 5 foot long that somewhat resembled Muskies to Hank only with bigger teeth and dark brown bodies with a pattern of silver spots down their sides.
Alaster walked down the stairs into the tunnel which had about a foot of water in it at this point and tried to teleport them. He got both fish and a gush of river water for his troubles. Hank cast on of his newly learned spells and cast dark bolts of necromantic energies into the thrashing fish until they died. He then called up the spells used to preserve dead bodies and quickly cast one on the fish to the right while Alaster began casting on the one to the left. They then tried to cast the spell to make zombies out of the fish. It took a couple tries and felt different than raising skeletons. There was more of a resistance to it and used more magic essence to raise them. Once they were zombies a second chant was needed to take control of them otherwise they would have been independent trying to bite the living and eat their flesh and brains to keep themselves from eventually degrading until they fell apart and became regular dead fish again.
Once they were done Hank and Alastor tried commanding them to cruise back and forth in the tunnel but the water was still a bit shallow for that. “ How about we find a couple more Alastor,” Hank said. “ I want at least that many to try out on the heroes who make it past your golem and down here.” Alastor agreed and even though he was tiring he once again scryed for the river to find them some more. After a while, they found two more of the fish of about the same size and brought them in and turned them into zombies like the first two. Hank even tried laying protections on the fish to keep them from being dispelled or repelled by mages and clerics.
With that, he thought they had done well and moved a skeleton into each of the four pits he had laid out below the partially sunken hall. He didn’t have any spears to give them yet to stab up into swimming adventurers. he would need to make a list soon of all this for Provoas. They had some old rusty swords and some knives that had been left in the castle that they had equipped some of their skeletons with. He had also tried making Flinty stone knives for the skeletons he had hidden in the column room with Alastors centipede golem which he thought would work for now. They had done just about all they could do without some more resources.
Hank asked Alaster where they might find some tar but he didn’t kno
w of any nearby sources and couldn’t reach any of the more distant places yet. They had been carving out the dungeon and working magic now for many hours and decided to take a break for Alastor to eat and for both of them to recover a bit of their magic energy. Hank spent this time once again passing himself through the stone he had claimed as his dungeon and tried to expand his range. Less of his essence embedded itself in areas he had already traversed but it did get a bit brighter to his sight. While areas he was newly claiming were more tiring for him and glowed dimmer.
His range of where he could go had expanded decently now that he had two whole floors done up above and the Heart of the dungeon further down in the mountain which currently had just one glowing column of his essence connecting them together. He decided to expand upon that and claim more of the intervening stone where he would eventually be carving the rest of the floors of the dungeon out. During this process, he came across a couple more modest veins of gold and some copper as well. Even a little silver all of which he teleported out of the stone and into the piles he was collecting above in a small room not yet connected to anything else on the second floor. He even took a bit of the prettiest and largest quartz crystals just to enjoy them. Then he went back up to Alastor and checked to see if he was ready to continue.
Down in the valley, a bored farm boy was getting done with some chores when he noticed there was a big pile of dry dusty dirt out back of the barn near the area that they normally dumped the compost that had not been there yesterday. He looked at it in puzzlement as it was just him and his mom and dad who lived here. Who would come by and dump so much dirt out back here and why? His dad was not going to be amused. He had been talking about clearing this area a bit more and fencing it in for the pigs for some time. He ran off to get him before he saw it for himself and blamed him for it.
Chapter 12
Later Tomas and his dad William were both shoveling the pile into the farmer’s wagon when part of an old ragged burlap sack with some old dried up turnips in it fell out of the pile. The sack had some writing on it that Tomas couldn’t read. “ Dad what does that say?” The Farmer looked at it a while before answering him, “ Tomas its the old name and Mark of the old Lord of the castle up yonder in the pass. My granddad did bend the knee and pay taxes to him long ago before the lord and his family died out of plague during a dark time and the pass was buried in a rock fall one winter many years ago.”
“Those turnips mayhap came from this very farm, raised by our family and paid in lieu of the tax money most farmers don’t have to give. This is passing strange my boy, that they would be returned to us this many years later. Mayhap something has disturbed their resting places for I heard on my father’s knee that no one ever went and buried them properly for fear of the plague even after all them years.” They both paused at that but then got back to shifting the dirt and refuse.
Hours later the farmer retold the tale down at the tavern to his fellows while having a drink or two. It might have grown a bit in the telling as the drinks flowed and it wasn’t too long before a few passing adventurers stopping by overheard a retelling of the tale and began asking about the old castle and its whereabouts from the locals. The next day four young adventurers sat talking about the story they had heard over breakfast at the tavern. “ Bah, Roarie scoffed, “ it is just a superstitious and drunk farmer telling tales, might as well check out his haunted turnip beds as climb all the way up there if you ask me.”
Birch, the ranger was silent but raised an eyebrow at his friend’s boisterous ire to the suggestion that they go to see the castle. He knew he would eventually give in to the rest of the party after having his say. “ So, said Lindel the soft-spoken cleric. “ Do you have a better suggestion where we might search for the forces of Darkness around here? The king and the church are only going to pay out for solid leads on where to root out the Dark’s minions if we find them.”
“ Otherwise, he said, its back to guarding caravans on those long dusty trails you like so much with the bandit ambushes and the long night watches.” Kaiden the mage spoke up at this, “ I hate the schedules on those. I hardly have any time to practice my art, it’s all walking, walking, walking and more walking day after day. And you know the caravan masters get antsy when we do fight bandits and I cast fire about. Their more worried I’ll set some of their goods on fire than whether I save you or the other guards lives with my fireballs.” Birch came in at the end. “ Maybe there will be something worth retrieving from the castle itself whether or not we find that the Dark’s minions are there. It was said that the place was abandoned in a hurry in times of plague.” Roarie cut back in here to grouse. “ That’s all we need, to catch the plague.” When Birch immediately replied, “ then it’s lucky we are to have Lindel here to make sure none remains to harm us.” And so it went as everyone ate and argued until it was settled that they would indeed make their way up the mountain to see what might lie in the castle later that day.
That same morning. The Darkness left at last and Hank and Alastor breathed a sigh of relief. Provoas called on Alastor to bring him up to oversee their progress and to give them new orders. They gave Provoas the list they had come up with and showed him around the first and second floors of the dungeon. “ Boys ,I am happy to see you have been so industrious. This looks good. I am particularly happy with your creations. These Golems are decently built and the spellcraft in their raising looks solid. These zombie fish look better than I thought they might as well. There are better fish in the seas to work with, but since Alastor has never seen them nor I suppose has he the reach for fishing for them now, yes I think these will do nicely. I will summon a minion to began gathering everything on the list but we will need somewhere other than the castle or the Altar room to store it in before we use it.”
“ I must say I am surprised at how well you Alastor are taking to learning Necromancy, that’s very rare in a demon, even most of the higher demons are not well versed in its use, the bond between you and Hank must have a lot to do with that. If you weren’t so thoroughly bound I would be hesitant to let you proceed in your studies, but I can see that your efforts here are genuinely speeding this project up and results are all the Dark cares about right now so keep it up. Provoas seemed genuinely pleased as he looked all around and then studied them both.
“ Now you both need to get down to the Alter room floor and expand upon it immediately. The Dark wants more rooms to house more of his own guards down there and I want to move down there immediately too. Make a great Hall much nicer than what this small castle holds with a high ceiling and impressive pillars. Also, I want the castle cleared out to look abandoned soon. The Dark is getting impatient with us already and we don’t want that.”
Hank and Alastor teleported down to the Altar room doors and began carving out more hallways and rooms on this floor. They worked quickly to get six more rooms done off to one side while forgoing practicing or learning more magics to hurry it along. Once again having memories from the dwarf saved Hank here because he had personally been to few places in his life that one would call a great hall on earth. He was also glad he hadn’t begun building a dungeon floor above them yet since Provoas wanted so much headroom. He thought of the pictures of cathedrals he had seen on earth and the vaulted ceilings and other fancy work and combined those ideas with the dwarfs memories of dwarven architecture. He also thought about the ancient amphitheaters of the Romans and wondered if he could combine some of these ideas to make something great. For now, he decided to wait upon this last idea. After all Rome wasn’t built in a day but apparently, the Dark was so impatient that might be all the time Hank had to get this done.
He focused on finding the best spot to carve out such a big room and made sure that there were no faults in the stone where he needed columns and walls to be. He pulled his essence from the stone and began carefully putting it back in the exact pattern he wanted the Great Hall to be laid out in. Hank made sure every plane and curve and angle and arch was as perfect as he
could make them checking twice before he began removing any stone and each cut he made so precisely it was as if he had polished the stones surface to a mirrored sheen.
He created huge stone columns holding up a vast ceiling with high arches Before he cut away any arches of the ceilings he cut small inlay patterns into the rock in straight lines like stars running from the top on down to the columns that supported each one. Then he brought down the gold he had found and had Alastor melt it down a bit at a time with hellfire he summoned in small bursts and then teleported it into the channels of the inlays to cool before cutting away the stone to reveal it.
He made a large platform with steps leading up to it while the rest of the hall sat lower than Provoas and the Dark. He placed a big room off from behind the platform for Provoas’s own living quarters and two guard rooms from either side of the foot of the platform for guard minions to be quartered just out of sight. The Great Hall he made impressively long so that one might have to walk for a while to even approach the platform. And last he created a huge doorway fit for two massive doors to fit into. With what little earth magic he possessed he was able to change the colors of the stone a bit by encouraging traces of minerals in the stone to come to the surface giving it a more exotic appearance than the rest of the stonework in the dungeon.Besides melting the gold down Alastor was kept busy teleporting the stone blocks out of the dungeon and up onto the top of the far pass. It took them several hours to get the great hall to this point and they were both getting pretty worn out.
