by Hugo Huesca
“Spread the word,” she told Bryne. “Tell everyone of our victory. Celebrations are in order!”
Kes shot Ed a glance. “Are they?”
He shrugged. “Maybe they are. Victories should be celebrated.” One never knew when they’d have to mourn defeats. On the other hand, he barely had time to sit down and relax these days. How could he, with the threat of Heroes looming over his Haunt like a scythe? “But you’ll have to toast in my absence, because I’m changing clothes and heading for Undercity. Oscor and I are meeting with Karmich and the Guild.”
“I’ll go with you,” Kes said.
Ed shook his head. If he let her, Kes would work day and night until she collapsed from exhaustion. “Take a breather, Kes. I’ll ask Laurel to lend me her Royal Guard.”
“Ah! A feast,” said Alder, pretending not to have heard Ed. “A Bard’s natural environment. What a perfect time to share my new verses with an eager public.” He smiled broadly. A captive audience was to him what baby seals were to a shark.
“Sorry,” Ed told him. “You know I need you in Undercity with me.”
Alder looked crestfallen. “We’re still pretending I’m the one calling the shots? I swear, Ed, everyone there already suspects who you are.”
“Alder, you should know having a suspicion that you can ignore is very different than someone forcing you to confront it,” Lavy said petulantly. She picked at her fingernails and grinned. “Don’t worry, I’ll have the batblins toast in your honor.”
“Oh, great. That makes it so much better,” Alder said sadly, but he made no more complaints.
“Thank you, my Lord,” Bryne told Ed. “Your Cruelness is most gracious. But, with all due respect, we refuse to celebrate without you alongside us. We’ll wait until you return, and then we’ll feast. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a celebration at all.”
“That… that’s very nice of you to say, Bryne. Thank you,” Ed said. Behind him, he could sense Alder trying to withhold a cheer. “I’ll try to deal with these matters quickly and be back in a couple days at the most.”
“One more thing, my Lord, with your permission,” Bryne said, holding his hat in front of him. “Are there any news about the Heroes?” Bryne looked over his shoulder and bent his fingers in the shape of a ward against ill-fortune. “Word’s been spreading,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Other dungeons between Galtia and Undercity have been attacked. Bandits and renegade kaftar live in most of them. But my cousin says that another Dungeon Lord fell recently. He says the Heroes are coming closer by the day.”
“I see,” Ed said. He exchanged glances with his friends. Alder’s smile had left his face, and Lavy was pale. They both knew first-hand the destructive capability of the inhuman creatures that the Militant Church used as their anti-Dungeon-Lord-weapon. “Don’t worry, Bryne. We aren’t like other dungeons. When they come, we’ll be ready.”
Bryne faked a confident smile. “The Light shall rue the day it defied the Haunt!”
“Just don’t let our friendly local priest hear that, or we’ll never survive the sermon,” Lavy urged the villager as they left him behind. Then, she asked, “So, what’s our plan? We have a plan, right?”
“Oh, we do,” Ed said, smiling broadly. “Do you know what a railroad is, Lavy?”
“No,” The Witch raised her eyebrows and glanced at the others, who shrugged as well.
“Don’t worry,” Ed said. “You will.”
The entrance to the dungeon was disguised by illusions of solid rock. It led to a tunnel lit by magical torches containing glowing crystals instead of flame, which bathed the rock in soft purples and pinks. Rows of crude stone statues shaped like winged gargoyles twice the size of Ed lined each side. Their eyes were engraved diamonds, which shone under the torchlight and gave them a lifelike aura, as if they were following the Dungeon Lord as he went. The gargoyles were another creation of his drones as evidenced by the fact that his minions had had to add a woolen loincloth to everyone.
So far, the gargoyles were just statues, but Ed had known as soon as he had seen them that he’d animate them as soon as he found out the appropriate spell. If there wasn’t one, he’d create it from scratch. I only hope we can glue those loincloths in place.
He thought of Ryan, his former boss at Lasershark, and imagined the expression he’d make if a naked gargoyle rushed at his character in the middle of a raid. Maybe my drones are on to something.
“There’s the mad grinning again,” Kes warned him.
They left the tunnel to arrive at the dungeon’s main hall. Once, it had been a partially collapsed cave hiding a few rotting crates of provisions that Dungeon Lord Kael Arpadel had chosen to keep away from his main dungeon. One could barely find that cave, now. The jagged roof had been replaced by a polished dome built out of stone slabs covered with obsidian plating. Diamonds encrusted in the obsidian imitated Ivalian constellations. A silver chandelier hung from the dome’s apex, with long arms surrounding its body and giving it a spherical shape meant to represent Ivalis’ most famous moon, Camcanna. Regenerating candles burned at the upper end of each of the eight arms, and the black wax rained down to the marble floor, where it flowed through canals carved as the figure of a mighty Lasershark—much to Ed’s dismay.
Braziers burned in brass stands along the circular walls, each shaped like an elongated skeletal arm. Tapestries covered the walls. Most of them showed, in the drone’s crude needlework, the history of the dungeon since its creation. In one, Ed and Lavy faced the batblin band back when Ed had first arrived in Ivalis, with Alder cowering behind the duo. In another, Spider Queen Amphiris collapsed as the ground gave way under her and Ed charged her with his flaming sword. A different scene showed Inquisitor Gallio and Ed standing at opposite sides of the broken body of the mindbrood. Farther along was the scene of a huge bonfire, with a humanoid figure writhing among the flames.
Ed wasn’t much of a fan of those tapestries. His favorites were the ones the artisans of Burrova were slowly adding to the bunch. They were normal pieces of art, the kind, he guessed, that might be found in the home of any Starevosi individual that could afford it. Flowers, coats-of-arms of famous kings, the ashen face of a mythical vampire, even a depiction of Oynnes, god of Commerce, handing a golden coin from the heavens down onto a starving crowd below.
The drones’ artwork and the villagers’ homey decorations didn’t mesh well at all. But Ed found it fitting. Life was built upon contrasts, even when they didn’t pair well together. A home in perfect harmony was one where no one lived.
The dungeon was very far from perfect harmony.
Brewer batblins pushed small carts carrying beer barrels, trying to move through the same tunnels that the Kitchen batblins were using to haul food. Both teams wanted to enter the tunnel first, and neither were willing to yield. While Ed watched, one of them threw a pie, and then an all-out brawl started. Nearby Research batblins—Lavy’s assistants—hurried away from the combat area and whispered among themselves in a way vaguely reminiscent of the Witch.
Villagers around the Lasershark engravings gossiped between themselves after a day of hard work. They were carpenters, traders and merchants, leather-workers, candle-makers, tailors, cobblers, and more. Ed knew most of their faces and some of their names. A few had been with the Haunt since Burrova, and others had arrived on their own, heeding the grapevine rumors of the Haunt’s prosperity that seeded the neighboring villages. They had brought their trades with them as well as their families.
A group of elite Janitor batblins saw the battle between Brewer and Kitchen and hefted their mops and crowd-control sticks and dove valiantly into combat, their child-sized gambeson tunics deflecting beer mugs and fruitcake projectiles. The villagers began taking bets. So far, the ferocious Kitchen batblins were winning by circling their service carts and bunkering behind them, but the grizzled Janitors were storming the defenses, even after their leader had been knocked-out by a flying salsa jar.
Ed smiled, basking in the
cacophony of cursing and thrown cutlery. The air smelled of lavender and thyme and burning incense. He took a moment to enjoy the warmth flowing up from the floor, which came from the furnace down below.
Ah, home at least, he thought happily.
Then he rained drones all over the brawl.
4
Chapter Four
Sole Survivor
High above the vaulted domes of Jiraz’ dungeon, a batblin hung with most of his body glued to the center of a spiderweb. His weight pulled the fine silver lines taut. Instead of struggling, though, he remained as stiff as he could. An involuntary twitch from his fingertips would send waves of vibrations spreading through the strands like water filling up a labyrinth.
Many of his kind had found horrifying deaths when walking through a dark forest alone and wandering into the sticky trap of a horned spider eager to sink its claws into soft, delicious batblin flesh. And the horned spider that glanced at this lone batblin from her vantage point on the ceiling was a princess, a full station above the lowly warriors that preyed on his kind. To most batblins, it would’ve been a nightmarish situation.
But Klek Adventurers’ Bane wasn’t like most batblins. He paid no attention to the lurking mass of the horned princess. His eyes were closed, and his long, pointed ears were tense with focus.
“Don’t move!” Tulip hissed, her mandibles clicking with irritation. “You must remain still, or the vibrations will scramble and become unreadable.”
“More unreadable, you mean,” Klek whispered, barely moving his lips. “It’s a mess down below, and I can barely understand what’s going on.”
“There’s not much to understand,” Tulip said darkly. “It’s a massacre, and if we escape soon, we’ll be next!”
“Don’t worry, Tulip. They can’t see us,” Klek assured her. Similar to him, she wasn’t like most horned spiders. Tulip was small for a princess, exchanging brawn for speed and a healthy dose of common sense that some may call cowardice. To Klek, they were the same thing. Tulip’s concerns were well founded. If the Inquisitors roaming Jiraz’ dungeon looked up, there was a chance their gazes may pierce the shadowy corner that Klek and Tulip occupied. If that happened, Klek had no doubt about the outcome. His own common sense told him he was insane, risking himself like this on the off chance of finding something that Lord Ed could use against the Heroes who, day by day, neared the Haunt’s territories. He tightened his jaw, willing himself to remain calm—a racing heart could be enough to set off the vibrations.
“This should be a job for a spiderling,” Tulip complained after a moment of silence. “Unlike us, they are expendable.”
“No one is expendable,” Klek chided her, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. “Spiderlings ain’t clever. That’s why Lord Ed entrusted this quest to us. We cannot fail him!” He took another deep breath and focused on his echolocation talent, which allowed him to sense the world around him using sound bouncing off surfaces. It was an activated talent, with a small energy expenditure. Normally, using it required no concentration at all, but this wasn’t a normal circumstance. “Now be quiet! They’re moving already.”
“Damn snack, thinking he can preach to me,” Tulip mouthed to herself, yet loud enough for Klek to hear.
“Shhh!” he urged her.
Tulip shut up, leaving Klek’s whole attention on the vibrations coming from the spiderweb. He listened, moving his ears around as he tried to build a mental map of the surrounding chambers.
There were about two dozen humanoids in the rooms below. Six of them were armored, their every step clanking loudly and making distinct vibrations that Klek quickly learned to distinguish. Inquisitors. They paced through stone corridors and tunnels and guarded the rest of the group as they stripped the dungeon and its former inhabitants of anything of value.
Metal rang against metal as trinkets, weapons, armor, and other assorted loot was thrown into carts and wheeled out of the dungeon to the surface, away from Klek’s range of hearing. Dungeon Lord Jiraz had traveled to Starevos with a small fortune. Lord Edward’s spiderlings had told him that Jiraz had built three other dungeons before this one, all of them annihilated by the same group of Heroes. Jiraz probably would’ve kept going for a while before running out of resources, but the Heroes had caught him before he’d added an escape route to this dungeon. Klek shook his head. Had Jiraz been a batblin, he would’ve known to never lift a finger without at least three different escape plans.
Jiraz’ demise was both a blessing and a curse for the Haunt. His presence near Hoia had drawn several groups of Heroes away from Galtia where most of them stripped the swamps out of werewolf clans and searched the frozen mountaintops for the surviving vampire nobility of Starevos. With Jiraz gone, the Heroes would be starving for action. If they didn’t find it soon, they might return to Galtia, but in the meantime, their presence was a danger to everyone not under the protection of Heiliges and its Militant Church. Lord Edward’s plan was to study the Heroes and the Inquisitors from afar until he could figure out the way they worked, then hopefully uncover the way to defeat them.
Who created the Heroes? How do they work; and can we make our own? These had only been a few of the questions Lord Edward asked aloud during countless nights pacing in the War Room. He insisted that the Heroes didn’t fit the world of Ivalis as he—or anyone else—understood it. They were unnatural. Artificial. Made in that specific way for a specific reason. If we can find out why, we can use it against them, he said. The first thing we must do to defeat a powerful enemy is to know the rules they follow. Find their limits, then exploit them.
Klek wasn’t a powerful warrior like Marshal Kes or Monster Hunter Kaga. Batblins were low on the food chain of a dungeon’s minions, usually little more than arrow fodder. Expendable, just like spiderlings. But Lord Edward didn’t see the world that way. He had given them a warm, safe home to hole up in winter, and found them a place in the dungeon’s hierarchy. Batblins were the Haunt’s backbone: messengers, cooks, and brewers. They assisted Andreena in potion-making and helped Heorghe work his forge. Most of the elite janitorial squad came from their ranks. The batblins of the Haunt were very different from what they’d been while surviving the unforgiving life of the forest being chased by humans, and spiders, and wolves alike. Klek himself differed greatly from the terrified batblin he’d been before the Haunt.
He was willing to do anything to avoid returning to those times.
The spiderweb registered the sound of footsteps approaching a nearby Inquisitor. Despite being unable to distinguish the man’s features, Klek found the Inquisitor familiar, in the way a hound may recognize the mailman by their smell. Klek held his breathing. Below, voices took the shape of waves as they crashed against the hard stone surface around them. Instead of causing the waves to break and dissipate, the stone carried them, vibrating in a tiny way that would’ve been impossible to sense by normal human—or batblin—senses. Tulip’s web, connected to the stone, picked the vibrations and transmitted them to Klek.
Using his echolocation to translate the garbled mess of information that the stone picked up was an interpretation of the talent that strained the limits of Objectivity’s patience, and even then, Klek had to use all his focus to filter the vibrations of that conversation out from all the other background noise that came to him at the same time. It was like putting his head down a confluence and guessing which water came from which river by drinking as fast as possible.
“Eminence… survivor… passageway…” Rats scurrying through holes in the walls. People arguing. The clank of metal.
“—found?” Someone taking a piss in an isolated corridor. A sneeze. The rattle of a wheelbarrow.
“Coffin inside… dark magic…” The Inquisitor and his interloper headed down a damp tunnel where several other Inquisitors and their helpers surrounded a hollow box that rested above a raised marble dais. Klek strained to follow the conversation, but he was reaching the limits at which he could make sense of the vibrations.
“Jiraz’ right hand…”
“The vampire.”
The word captured Klek’s interest. He redoubled his efforts.
“Destroy… it?”
There was a pause, while the leader considered his options. “No,” he said. “Execution… Constantina. Rebels must see…”
Klek furrowed his brow. A pearl of sweat traveled down his nose and disrupted his mental picture. When he found the correct vibrations again, the familiar Inquisitor was ordering everyone around. He didn’t seem disturbed. Someone brought a long chain and waited until the magic around the dais evaporated. Then they chained the box. A coffin, Klek thought. He heard the grunts and the strain as six people lowered the coffin down and heaved it on their shoulders. They carried it out, with the Inquisitors following.
Soon enough, they left the batblin’s listening range. He sighed and relaxed his body, feeling as tired as if he’d run most of the day. His pelt was slick with sweat.
“You hear anything interesting?” Tulip asked.
Klek signaled at her to release him. Her legs and mandibles set to unravel her web with an instinctive dexterity that would’ve been the envy of any seamstress. “I think so, yes,” he said, fighting off exhaustion. “The Heroes’ that cleared the dungeon missed a minion.”
“That’s not unusual,” Tulip said. “They miss many minions. Sometimes they don’t even bother with the weakest ones, as if those were beneath their notice. The Inquisition hunts the survivors down after the Heroes have gone, makes sure there are none remaining.”
“This is different,” said Klek. “The minion was a vampire. Jiraz’ second. The Inquisitor chose not to kill him, though. They’re bringing the coffin to Undercity with the vampire trapped inside.” He shivered. Even though vampires were nightmarish creatures that preyed on the weak and innocent, being trapped inside a box waiting for execution was too unnerving to consider. Batblins and tight spaces didn’t mix.
