Dungeon Lord: Abominable Creatures (The Wraith's Haunt Book 3)

by Hugo Huesca

  Alder shuddered.

  I don’t like her either, Ed told him. But remember why we’re doing this.

  The Bard went ahead with his questioning. After all, the faster he got it done with, the faster he’d be able to leave the chamber. It was too cold, anyway.

  Jarlen’s memories of the Heroes’ attack were fuzzy. She recalled that the Rogue had separated from the other Heroes and had tried to sneak into Jiraz’ Throne Room while the others dealt with a shock detachment of naga spellcasters. Jarlen had taken command of Jiraz’ personal guard and had ambushed the Rogue while he dealt with a trapped section of the dungeon and fought off a bunch of acid slimes. Jarlen had been sure that her ploy had worked—the Rogue had been overwhelmed, at first, but then the Heroic Cleric had broken ranks and headed to rescue the Rogue while the Warrior kept the naga occupied. Jarlen had felt the burning pain of a holy spell striking against her back, and then the Rogue’s scimitars had flashed across her neck—after that, everything had gone dark. Her heart of mist talent had taken over, instantly turning incorporeal and flying straight back to her coffin.

  “And what about your… condition?” Alder asked. He gestured at her current size with his free hand, careful not to drop the lens away from his face.

  “It must’ve been the fault of those damned Inquisitors!” Jarlen said through a snarl. “They cracked my coffin, so mist must’ve poured out before my body had a chance to regenerate. It’ll take years before I’m back to normal! By the Dark, I swear that when I get my hands on them, I’ll drink them dry and then bathe in their innards while they’re still live and writhing!”

  Alder swallowed. “Yeah. It must’ve been them. Screw those guys.” The effect of her diminished form only added to her creepiness. She lacked even a tiny ounce of a child’s innocence. She looked exactly like a small animated corpse dressed up with doll’s clothes, but her facial expression was adult and cruel, and her lips parted a bit too much over her mouth, as if the skin was too tight to fit her skull.

  Don’t let her intimidate you, Ed told him. She’s the one who should be scared. But Alder could feel through their shared connection that Ed was unnerved as well, and he was trying to reassure himself as much as Alder. Ask her about the Heroes. In general, I mean. We need to know if she and Jiraz had faced them before. What are they?

  Alder doubted she’d cooperate without first negotiating a minionship pact, but he asked her anyway. The vampire’s golden eyebrows rose an inch, then she chuckled mirthlessly. Alder noted the way her eyes turned distant—calculating. Using his empathy talent to read her emptiness was almost as telling as if there had been something there the first place. “I know who you are,” she said at last. “Lord Wraith, is it not? The Netherworld is hot with gossip about you, your Lowness. The first otherworldly Dungeon Lord. Summoning you was a move stolen straight from the Light’s playbook. Some think it’s a shameful display of desperation to bring a stranger to deal with our problems. They’d rather you to go back whence you came. I’m not so sure, myself.” She narrowed her eyes to slits. “How did you survive here? When Jiraz and I came to Starevos, we tried to contact you—forge an alliance, yet you refused to answer. Why?”

  Because you’re murderous lunatics, Ed thought.

  “We’re the ones asking the questions,” Alder said.

  “I was more than twice your age before I became a vampire,” Jarlen told Alder. “I know all the tricks, kid. I want proof you won’t destroy me afterward. I want a pact.”

  Ed had already discussed with him what to say if she asked for a pact. “Best I can do is a temporal offer,” Alder said. “We shall speak the truth to each other, and will respect the spirit of the pact as well as the letter. For the duration, we won’t harm you, and you won’t harm us. No escape attempts, either.”

  The vampire’s face was a gray mask. Again, Alder detected no emotions other than the constant undercurrent of anger. He had the eerie sensation that his empathy had misread her the first time around. She was angry because he was warm and alive, and she was cold and dead, and she wanted to take what he had and drink it all into her. “I see,” she intoned. “Interesting offer.” She shuffled closer to the lines of the magical circle. “But then again, why bother with all this wariness, Lord Wraith? As creatures of the Dark, we’re kindred spirits. We should be talking as equals, eager to join forces against the Militant Church. Just have your vessel break this flimsy circle. Step over its boundary, my darling, and we can have ourselves a merry chat.”

  An enticing, pale purple light shone out of her eyes as she spoke that last sentence. Alder could see the beam through the dirty lens. Its light was diffused, filtered somewhat by the enchantments in the glass, but the Bard could now see how shoddy its craftsmanship had been—the magic unraveled as Jarlen’s magic punched through with ease, to Alder’s horror.

  Jarlen’s words seemed coated in honey as they reached his ears. They echoed inside his head, warm and lovely like the lullabies his mother sang to him when he was a baby in the cradle.

  Alder?

  Nothing in the world would be more lovely than following Jarlen’s gentle suggestion. And she was right, anyway. Why would they distrust a potential ally as powerful as her? She could do so much for the Haunt. If only they showed her the tiniest bit of confidence…

  Alder, don’t listen to her!

  Alder took a step toward the circle. Jarlen’s eyes widened with anticipation, a smirk drawing on her face as her hands extended to embrace him warmly as soon as he was over the boundary, and he was almost there, his feet hovering an inch behind the limit of the circle, with all his weight set to finish that step—

  And he was yanked out of his body by a black roaring cloud inside his head, violently shoved into some backward basement inside his own mind. As soon as he’d lost control of his body, his common sense had returned, as fast as he’d hit the basement’s floorboards. He was horrified with himself, and at what had been about to happen.

  He watched through two distant holes of light—almost in slow motion—as his leg passed the boundary of the magical circle, carried by his own body’s forward momentum. What he’d thought of as a small step had been practically a leap. Alder saw how the little undead monster hissed with pleasure and hunger and flung herself at the Dungeon Lord—at Alder—as fast as a blink, her claws aimed straight at his eyes.

  Alder screamed as the shadow of the vampire covered his face.

  And he saw how Ed used the very same weight of the leap to drive himself forward in one single fluid motion, then punched Jarlen straight in the mouth.

  Jarlen’s tiny frame flew backward and smashed against the table of her coffin with a sharp crack, looking more confused than hurt. Ed almost thought that the coffin would fall on her, and he felt compelled to let it. But the thing didn’t move at all, which in hindsight made sense. He didn’t have superhuman strength, after all, and the vampire didn’t weigh enough to shake the table much.

  Ed stepped away from the circle and threw a quick glance behind him, just as Kes flung the door open, sword drawn. “Keep back,” he told her. “It’s under control.”

  “Like hell it is,” the Marshal snapped. Klek was right behind her, dual-wielding a pair of stakes that looked like miniature spears in his small hands. Ed realized that the batblin and the vampire were about the same size.

  The vampire cursed in ancient Lotian. Ed could’ve bet that she was insulting Alita’s genitals in luxurious detail. “In my true form, I would’ve torn that arm out of its socket,” she said matter-of-factly. “Even cursed, I’m stronger than this vessel you inhabit, Lord Wraith.” She almost sounded like a child whining, but that inhuman face left no room for doubt.

  Ed waved his friends away—he wasn’t willing to risk them getting hypnotized, since he didn’t know how fast Jarlen could spam the damn ability. Alder and he were the safest ones in the room, anyway—if Alder failed a mental test, Ed had a chance to pass it himself, which had been exactly what had happened.

 
; “You may be a rank stronger,” Ed told Jarlen, “but you still are a fraction of his weight.” His hand—Alder’s, actually—pulsated painfully after the strike, and perhaps there was a cracked knuckle somewhere, and even then Ed had only pushed the vampire away. Jarlen wasn’t hurt at all, despite him having struck her as hard as he could.

  Near the door, Kes stared daggers in the general direction of the magical circle. Ed waved at her again. It’s fine, he told her with a look. Klek looked confused. He made small stabbing motions with his stakes, giving Ed a meaningful glance. “I’ll let you know if it comes to that,” Ed reassured him. Reluctantly, Klek lowered his stakes. The Marshal and the Spider Rider left the chamber and closed the door behind them.

  Jarlen cursed again, then straightened, and seemed to calm herself in the blink of an eye. “Well. I had to try it. It almost worked, though,” she said.

  “I should kill you for that,” Ed told her, trying to mirror her calmness. She unnerved him much more than he’d like Alder to know. A dead body, gray and cold, yet still animated and able to move with a fluidity and grace that rivaled that of any living being. It was unnatural. Orders of magnitude worse than a zombie. Almost as bad as a wraith. Perhaps he ought to leave and collapse the ceiling on her and her coffin, then set the splinters on fire afterward, for good measure. Let her try to survive that.

  But he had risked his life and the lives of his friends to get the creature to the Haunt. He couldn’t just let that effort go to waste.

  “For what, trying to defend myself against an obvious trick?” Jarlen told him. “A temporal pact! What a joke. There were no guarantees you’d let me go when you were done questioning me. And you don’t seem that enthused about my services, Lord Wraith, which is frankly baffling, given the incredible powers I could set at your disposal. Maybe you desired a demonstration of my capabilities. Was I right? Are you satisfied with my little demonstration? The hypnotic gaze is only a small taste of what I can do, of the ruin I can bring upon your enemies.”

  “And little good it did you against the Heroes,” Ed said pointedly. “No, Jarlen, you have it wrong. A prisoner gets no say in the terms of their imprisonment. My temporal pact gives you no guarantees I won’t kill you, but I can simply kill you without it, anyway. What you’re getting is one single chance to prove your worth, on my terms.” He raised three fingers. “First, you’ll show me your character sheet. No more surprises. Second, you’ll tell me all you know about the Heroes. How to fight them. How to kill them. What are they made of, when did they appear? All of it. And last, you’ll tell me of all the ugly deeds you’ve done as a vampire, so I can know what to expect of you.” And to know if I should kill you outright, if you turn out to be as monstrous as you appear, he thought. “Do all that, and then we can talk about minionship.”

  Jarlen’s eyes seemed like two embers of fury in her tiny dead face framed by golden curtains. “At least you speak your mind, Dungeon Lord. But you’re ignoring one small detail. I’m worth nothing to you if I’m destroyed. On the contrary, I’ve friends in the Netherworld willing to pay a nifty price for my release. I doubt you’ll simply get rid of me if I refuse to speak.” She crossed her arms and smiled at him. “Leave me imprisoned if you wish. I wonder how long it’ll take for you to come back, begging to take me in, while the Militant Church pounds at your doors.”

  Ed made his hand into a frustrated fist. She was right. He couldn’t just kill her outright, not without figuring out what she knew. And he was on a literal deadline—every day, the Heroes’ attention neared Hoia, and the Scramblers wouldn’t keep them away indefinitely.

  But was he willing to let what was very possibly a psychopathic mass murderer—or worse—into the Haunt, just because he had a use for her? Wasn’t that exactly what the Lotian Dungeon Lords did—recruit inhuman monsters that were willing to go to lengths any decent being would outright refuse?

  Call her out, Alder thought at him.

  I can’t, Ed thought back, sharing all his doubts through their mental connection. If she stands her ground afterward, I’ll lose all leverage if I don’t follow through.

  The Bard performed the disembodied equivalent of shaking his head no. Trust me on this one, Ed. This is what I’m good at. You called her a psychopath. I think I know what you mean by that—you’re saying she cares for nothing and no one. Except, you’re wrong on one thing. She cares about herself. This will work. Trust me.

  Ed took a deep breath and made his choice. “Well, sad to see this was all a waste of time,” he said aloud. He didn’t need to fake the twinge of annoyance in his words. Without looking at Jarlen, he snapped his fingers and two drones appeared in front of him with small puffs of smoke. “Our negotiations with our guest failed before they began,” he announced. “Gather firewood and collapse all exits. I want this chamber burnt to a crisp come daylight.”

  The vampire huffed, “Bah!” and smacked her dry blue lips.

  The two drones snapped to attention and threw malicious glares at the magical circle as they talked among themselves in their unintelligible language. Ed turned to leave. For a moment, the only sound in the room came from the drones’ chatter and his boots clanking against the stone floor. Fuck it, he thought as he walked away. There are other Dungeon Lords around, perhaps they’ll cooperate.

  He was reaching for the heavy reinforced door when he heard the vampire stomp on the ground. “Wait!” she exclaimed, a twinge of desperation in her voice.

  Ed grabbed the handle and pushed the door open. Light from the hallway’s torches flooded the chamber.

  “Lord Wraith, wait!” the twinge carried a pinch of hysteria now. “It was all a mistake, I was just testing your mettle—”

  Ed stepped out of the chamber, barring the door hard enough for the vampire to hear it.

  Ed let his drones pile firewood around the magical circle for an hour, with the vampire’s cries bouncing around the rocks of the dungeon. In the meantime, he returned to his own body back in Zachary’s quarters—which the priest had helpfully vacated. The batblin cooks brought a cart with dinner for him and his friends while they rested and let their nerves settle.

  It had been a long night. Ed was sure that, if he closed his eyes, he could see the glow from Gallio’s sunwave coming his way, and could almost feel the heat prickling his skin.

  He nibbled on some buttered toast and downed it with long gulps of goat milk, which was creamy and slightly sweeter than cow milk. He handed Klek a honey jar, into which the batblin’s snout disappeared for several minutes.

  Outside, in the mortuary, Jarlen kicked and screamed as the drones piled wood around her.

  Kes munched on fistful after fistful of nuts and talked about what she’d do to Zachary and Brett for giving them a faulty lens.

  Jarlen pleaded and smacked herself against the invisible barrier of the magical circle, the distinct crackle of energy reaching Ed’s ears as clear as day.

  Lavy sat in a corner, unwilling to get anywhere near Zachary’s unkempt bed. She seemed to be in a terrible mood, and only spoke once, to make sure everyone knew that Nightshades were supposed to be better than the one in the mortuary, and that Jarlen was probably a mistake of some kind, and perhaps they could try to enter the Netherworld and try to recruit another one? Preferably an adult male, was the unspoken sentence on her lips. She crossed her arms and pouted. Everyone else shifted uncomfortably and tried their best to think about anything other than the Witch’s tastes, except for Klek, who was too busy with his jar of honey to pay attention, anyway.

  Alder ate little and drank much, his hands shaking a bit. The experience of almost having been siphoned dry had clearly rattled him, but the Bard recovered surprisingly fast—it wasn’t his first brush with death. Soon enough, he was regaling everyone with the tale of his front-row experience to how Ed had punched an undead toddler so hard it vaulted into the air and almost landed back into its coffin. Alder looked more than a little tempted to alter his tale a bit in later retellings and add that last little
detail in.

  “All right,” Ed said, after everyone was full and had rested a bit. He could sense his drones piling firewood past the hallway. Jarlen had stopped shouting and was now sitting atop her coffin, brooding. It was the small hours of the night, somewhere between one and three AM back in the world that had working clocks. “I think that’s enough of a timeout for her to get the point.”

  He had a single horned spider enter the mortuary. Her name was Saffron, one of Klek’s own. Ed hitched a ride inside her mind just in case, using another casting of Murmur’s reach, but this proved unnecessary.

  Jarlen accepted Ed’s temporal pact as soon as the offer left Saffron’s mandibles.

  14

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Inquisitor's Dilemma

  The mid-afternoon sunlight streamed into the hall, breaking into a myriad beams as it came into contact with the fractal crystal panels that composed the ceiling and bathing everything with a dance of rainbow dots. The light shone on the Examiners’ silver-padded shoulders, the marble table in front, the plate armor of the Inquisitors guarding the exit, the sober plants that hung from clay vases up the walls, and straight into Inquisitor Gallio’s eyes.

  Gallio squinted and fought back the need to cover his face.

  Symbolism like that wouldn’t escape the Examiners—the forlorn Inquisitor, blinded by the Light and turning his back from it. It was the reason they’d chosen to conduct the examination at this time of day, with the sun at their backs.

  That was very much the Examiners’ modus operandi. Why trust the Goddess to provide meaning when it was faster to manufacture it?