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

by Hugo Huesca

  “Let’s consider this a test of my faith,” Gallio said. “If Alita’s design provides for me being a leader, then it shall be so. In the meantime, we should focus on keeping Oak alive.”

  Alvedhra nodded, relieved.

  They walked together through the garden, letting the aroma of flowers and wet grass relax their bodies and minds. There was no stench of fish in any home of Mullecias Street.

  “There’s one more thing we need to discuss,” Gallio said after a while. “But first, let’s drop the Inquisitor mantle for a while, Alvedhra. Let’s speak as friends.”

  Alvedhra read his intentions instantly. “Gallio—”

  “Kes,” Gallio said. Alvedhra winced as if someone had brandished a knife in her face. “We haven’t talked about what happened since the Clerics cleansed you.”

  “To be honest, I came searching for you to talk about something else. I was hoping you’d forget about this,” Alvedhra said honestly.

  “Really?”

  “Well, I know it was foolish. That’s why I called it ‘hope.’ ”

  They reached a small bird fountain made of granite. There was a sculpture atop the fountain, representing some Starevosi pagan god. Possibly a spirit of Harvest, judging by the size of its breasts, but there was no way of knowing—the head was missing, probably smashed by some overzealous Inquisitor.

  Alvedhra spoke first. “I’m sorry for leaving on my own during the battle. I let my temper get the better of me, and it forced you to rush in without reinforcements. I could’ve gotten you killed.”

  “Look, if I had an Aureus for every time I lost my temper and did something stupid, Oynnes himself would have turned me into his Avatar long ago.” That got Alvedhra to smile and roll her eyes, which had been the point. “I’m worried about you, Al, not about your tactical mistakes. Seeing Kes like this, out of nowhere, must’ve been hard.”

  It was for me, Gallio thought, recalling his encounter with Ed. The Dungeon Lord had changed from a young man—almost a kid, really—into a barely recognizable warrior. With his face hidden by his helmet and that cape masking his proportions, it may have been any Dungeon Lord in that forest. But the voice had left no room for doubts.

  “That’s my point, I guess,” Alvedhra said. She strolled to the bird fountain and rummaged through her pockets until she found a second bag, this one full of birdseed, which she used to restock the fountain’s brass plate. Gallio wondered if she just carried bags of seed with her all day. “I shouldn’t have lost my temper. What happened to Kes… I’ve fought with myself so long over it, you know? At first, I didn’t want to believe it. It had to be some kind of mistake. A ruse. I figured Kes would kill the Dungeon Lord when she had the chance, then she’d hide somewhere. Can I tell you a secret? If she had—killed the Dungeon Lord, I mean—I wouldn’t have chased her. I know that destroying the minions of the Dark is our duty and all… but…” She shrugged and made her hands into fists, visibly fighting tears. “Goddamn it.”

  Gallio shuffled next to his friend and hugged her. Dealing with… displays of emotion other than zealous rage wasn’t something they taught kids in the convent which meant that the way most Inquisitors dealt with emotions was by repressing them for decades until something cracked and they heard voices or screaming in their sleep. “There, there,” he said lamely.

  Alvedhra hid her face underneath her hands and took a deep breath. Then she brushed her cropped hair away from her forehead—a reflex from when it had been longer. “There, there?” A very tiny grin curled on her lip. “Really?”

  “Don’t judge. Charm is my lowest stat.”

  Her grin grew a quarter of an inch. Gallio nodded with satisfaction. Humor was the multi-purpose weapon of the emotionally stunted, and he brandished it as fiercely as he would a sword if his back were against the wall.

  “That person we found in the forest wasn’t Kes,” Alvedhra said quietly, out of nowhere. She crossed her arms and glanced at the blue sky. “I know that now. Denial, anger, blaming myself… all those are parts of grieving, like the Priests say. I was mourning her loss, because she died when she pacted with a Dungeon Lord, even if her body is still there, acting and speaking like she would’ve. Do you understand?” When she faced Gallio, there was a glint of vengeful fire in her eye. “There are so many tales of evil creatures taking the shape of the ones we love and pretending to be them. Changelings. Sephar’s Bane. High elves switching human children for their own. I decided that a Dungeon Lord’s pact is much the same thing. If you don’t reject the Dark, it consumes you. Kes is gone. And if I wish to avenge her, I must destroy the Lord that took her. Perhaps then, if I free her soul, Alita will allow her entrance into the afterlife.” The intensity in her eyes quieted slowly, like the embers of a fireplace, leaving only a tired Ranger. She slumped. “Does that make any sense?”

  I don’t know, Gallio thought. I don’t know! Were Inquisitors supposed to be this full of doubts? Had the heroes of old—the ones of flesh and blood—always wondered if the step they took was the right one? It couldn’t be. Nothing would ever get done if good people were as unsure of themselves as Gallio was. Dungeon Lords would crush them easily, since Dungeon Lords never faltered.

  The last time that Gallio’s faith had swayed, people had died, and he’d lost Alita’s favor.

  He knew the answer Alvedhra expected. The one he should give. Of course she was right. Evil should be burned from the world. Whatever Alvedhra told herself as a motivation would do.

  But… but Gallio also knew that Alita wasn’t famous for her mercy. “Cruel Golden Bitch” was one of the many nicknames the Lotians had for her, and they—may the Light forgive him—weren’t entirely wrong. She was unforgiving because she had to be, of course. Giving an inch to the Dark, allowing doubt and fear to stay her hand, would mean losing Ivalis to eternal night.

  Even if Alvedhra killed Edward Wright and released Kes’ soul to receive Alita’s judgment… Gallio had little doubt what the sentence would be.

  And if I tell her that, what will it achieve? She still has her duty. What did the tenets say about white lies? He was sure that speaking the truth had to be somewhere in there.

  “I don’t know if it makes sense,” Gallio told her, hating himself for his cowardice. “I’m but a mortal, and cannot speak for the Goddess. I can only do my duty as best as I can.”

  “My duty. Right.” Gallio could see her holding onto his words like a drowning woman to a log. “You are right, of course. I shall do my duty above all else. Thank you, Gallio. I needed to hear that. Here, there’s something you need to see.”

  There is something wrong with this, Gallio thought as Alvedhra rummaged through her pockets again. There was something he had missed. Some meaning he’d mangled. He’d done something wrong, even if he’d aligned with the tenets. How could that even be?

  But Alvedhra was already moving forward, drawing confidence from Gallio’s hollow assurances. She produced a small wooden tube and showed it to him. “Remember this?”

  It was the dart that the kaftar had used to put her to sleep.

  “Nasty concoction,” Gallio said, while wondering on the inside what that had to do with anything. “You kept it?”

  “More like it hitched a ride on my neck while I was being dragged to safety,” she explained. “As a Ranger, I was taught that if you’re bitten by a snake, you should try to capture that snake and bring it with you to a healer.” She held the dart between her fingertips and raised it above her head. “I think that, in my dazed state, I thought this was somehow like being bitten by a snake, so I held on to it.”

  “Was it any use to the Clerics?”

  “No,” Alvedhra said with a dismissive wave. “Not at all. But after I had time to clear my mind, I realized I recognize it.”

  Gallio titled his head as he processed Alvedhra’s words. “Recognize it?”

  “I’m a Ranger,” she said simply. “This is my country, and I spent most of my life around these lands. Kaftar clans are nomadic, but they
move in cycles. This clan, I’ve met them twice before.” She gestured at Gallio to grab the dart. “See those markings over there? Vaguely resembling crossed scimitars if there’s good light. It’s the symbol of the Haga’Anashi. It means ‘Raventop’s Grudge’ in Heiligian, which is what I called them—way easier to pronounce, if you ask me.”

  “What does their name mean?”

  “Beats me. Most likely werewolves ate their grandparents because they’re mean Monster Hunters, and they’re damn good at it. Cities and villagers hire them to clear rotface infestations, or acid blobs breeding in dank cellars, perhaps find some rabid pixies down a well. There are rumors, though, that they work for Dungeon Lords too. They help them collect monsters for their defenses, their experiments, or their personal collections. I guess the rumors were right, this time.”

  Gallio nodded, studying the crisscrossed, serrated slashes that were the symbol of the Grudge. “It seems that way, yes. Do you think they recognized you?”

  Alvedhra shook her head no. “First time I met them, I was a kid. They came to Burrova and got rid of a nasty group of harpies that had been eating the livestock—”

  “Harpies? I’d no idea there were harpies around Constantina.”

  “There aren’t any now.” Alvedhra retrieved the dart and pocketed it. “Second time, I was an apprentice Ranger. Our master brought Cousin Ioan and I to the Haga’Anashi campsite. A Dungeon Lord had died in the marshes near our territories; a couple cockatrices escaped from his dungeon, and it was nearing their mating season. They were too dangerous to hunt alone, so our master hired a squad of Monster Hunters to find them and deal with them before they could multiply and ruin the local ecology.”

  They sound very useful, those kaftar, Gallio thought. It was the sort of duty an Inquisitor should do if they hadn’t been all so occupied dealing with their own infighting.

  “Their chieftain was Kagelshire—or something like that. Judging from the spotting on his fur, I would bet my bow the kaftar that dosed me was Kagelshire’s son or nephew,” Alvedhra said. “You know what that means?”

  “It means the clan won’t be too far from Wright’s dungeon,” Gallio said. He could feel his eyes go wide. Alvedhra was right. This was big—the sort of thing they should bring to their superiors immediately. If they got a lead on Wright’s main dungeon, they could deal with him in a single blow. With one well-targeted spell to disable any Portals, and Wright’s story may come to an end.

  Gallio’s blood froze in his veins. Yes, Wright’s story would end, but so would the story of all the Burrova’s villagers he’d saved because of Ioan’s betrayal. Only if he didn’t send them away, Gallio thought, desperately. He promised he’d free them in the neighboring villages.

  But he knew how much a Dungeon Lord word’s was worth, didn’t he? How could he have been so foolish? There was no doubt in his mind that Wright had kept as many innocent villagers as possible in his dungeon, a safety net to prevent Gallio from prying too hard.

  Not that it’d change a thing. When they first met, Gallio was but a Sheriff. Today, he was an Inquisitor. His duty was perfectly clear. Wasn’t that what he’d told Alvedhra only an instant ago?

  He’d played himself.

  “Alita, have mercy on my soul,” he pleaded in a whisper.

  “What did you say?” Alvedhra asked.

  It was eerie—to think that the death of so many could be decided in the middle of a garden full of life.

  “Let’s hope that Inquisitor Oak is up to the task,” Gallio said. He walked away all of a sudden, forcing Alvedhra to jog to catch up with him. He was eager to get to a place with hard floor under his boots.

  Suddenly, he couldn’t stand the sight of the garden.

  15

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jarlen

  Jarlen of the Hidden Catacombs

  Species: Elf Nightshade

  Essence: (73 years since conversion)

  Attributes

  Brawn: 18 (-6 for Cursed Form)

  Agility: 17 (-6 for Cursed Form)

  Endurance: 18 (-6 for Cursed Form)

  Mind: 13

  Spirit: 10

  Charm: 8

  Skills

  Combat Casting: Advanced (II) - Pertains to the speed and efficiency of spells cast during combat or life-threatening situations.

  -Basic status allows the caster to use spells as quickly as their body can sustain. The caster must perform the appropriate hand gestures.

  Melee: Basic (IV) - Temporal skill, can become trained or be improved to open the brawling branch.

  Stalking: Improved (III) - Stealth-tree branch. The owner knows how to move without being detected.

  Knowledge (Anatomy): Improved (IV)

  Knowledge (Ancient History - Lotian): Improved (VII)

  Candlemaking: Basic (IX)

  Taxidermy: Advanced (V)

  Leadership: Basic (VI)

  …

  Essence Talents

  Nightshade

  Heart of the Mist

  Vampiric Endurance

  Vampiric Regeneration

  Hypnotic Gaze

  Compel Critters

  Blood Potency

  Mist Shape

  Creature of the Night

  Enhanced Thrall

  …

  While studying Jarlen’s character sheet, Ed couldn’t help feeling like an archaeologist looking at an ancient parchment recently unearthed. Even the format of the sheet looked outdated, and the list of skills she’d picked up somewhere along the way was too big to list, even if undead learned skills at a very reduced rate.

  The interrogation was interrupted by the incoming sunrise, at which point Jarlen was forced to go back to her coffin. Ed and the others left her there and spent the day sorting out the loot they’d earned from the pillage of the Inquisition wagons. After that, Kes ran so many security drills in the early morning that everyone had their nerves on edge by supper, enough so that a woman jumped under a table when a batblin dropped a spoon next to her seat. Priest Zachary made bank selling polished brass trinkets he’d crafted earlier that day to the nervous Haunt citizens, swearing the charms were anointed by Oynnes and that they’d protect them against vampire bites and hypnosis. When Lavy heard about it, she confiscated both the trinkets and the profit.

  Ed went to sleep early, right after supper, and had his drone butler wake him up before midnight. He met with his friends at the entrance of the mortuary, and together they headed inside to finish the interrogation.

  Jarlen was already waiting for them, sitting on her coffin, her legs dangling from its edge. She looked emaciated and, as she spoke, wouldn’t stop staring at Alder’s neck, much to the Bard’s dismay.

  The vampire had been fifty-something when she was alive—the elven equivalent of her mid-thirties. She’d been a vampire for longer than that, and in total she was almost a hundred and a half years old.

  She’d lived in Lotia while it was still a kingdom not unlike Heiliges, but when it had been ruled by the cadre of the Dungeon Lords of old. She had lived through the revolution that became, after years of bloodshed and chaos, the seeds of modern Lotia: a group of warring city-states which barely tolerated one another if they weren’t openly fighting amongst themselves, all of them tied to the Netherworld and the worship of Murmur. The modern Lotian Dungeon Lords lived in the no-man's land between the cities, fighting everyone—themselves most of all, but also the cities’ armies, and roving bands of Heroes that the Inquisition summoned, at great cost for themselves, straight into Lotian territories.

  Ed himself had played the “Evil Empire” expansion of Ivalis Online. It had been the first-ever DLC, right after the main storyline, which involved cleansing the “Light Kingdom” of all Dungeon Lord presence. In the expansion, Ed had scoured the rainy Lotian hilltops and marshes one Boss at the time, racking up EXP by the thousands, hordes of monsters dying at the heels of his Wizard as he launched endless blizzards of magical damnation at them. He’d left empty dungeons in
his wake, destroyed Netherworld detachments, and routed marauding mercenaries from the city states. It was eerie to realize that, even before his arrival, he’d been an unaware player in Ivalis’ current state of affairs.

  Hearing Jarlen speak arose in Ed a kind of hunger not unlike the one the vampire held for human blood. For a long time, he’d been painfully aware of how large his gaps in knowledge about his new world were. His access to history books was limited, and Starevos’ records were mainly focused on its own history, most of which was oral, not written. The majority of those few books had been lost, anyway, after Heiliges had invaded the country and implanted a steel-clad hold on Starevosi libraries, most of which were in Galtia, the capital, whose palace was currently occupied by a Heiligian princeling.

  Ed had had to buy a few black-market books through the Thieves Guild. The fat tomes had been written by Elaitran chroniclers and were stocked in the Haunt’s library between Lavy’s Witchcraft tomes and a few scrolls on monster biology that Kaga’s clan had lent the Haunt. The Elaitran books were biased toward Heiliges and the Militant Church, but Ed hoped to unearth the truth by contrasting them against Jarlen’s eyewitness account, and maybe find a sliver of truth in the middle.

  Don’t think of her as a member of the Haunt just yet, he told himself. He had little doubts that Jarlen was a monstrous creature, but the question was, was she the kind of monster that could be contained—like the horned spiders? If she wasn’t, she’d have to go, no matter how useful she was.

  “Tell me about the Heroes,” he said.

  A heavy tension filled the air. Klek bent forward, his bat ears straightened in rapt attention. Jarlen squinted and pursed her lips.