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

by Hugo Huesca

  “But golems do not need an external set of instructions,” Pholk said. “That’s what the Heroes are, right? Some kind of advanced construct?”

  “Yes and no,” Ed said. “They are a kind of golem with no autonomy, controlled by a third party through that signal. When the anti-magic field interrupted my old Wizard’s control signal, and it suffered enough internal damage, an internal enchantment activated a self-destruct sequence.” It wasn’t terribly complicated to set up. A couple fireball runes, then a simple status mechanism hooked up to an alarm to trigger the runes.

  The Head Researcher rubber her sleep-deprived eyes. “The control signal also triggers the teleport, then? No wonder it’s Heroic-ranked. Only a few Heiligian Wizards are powerful enough to set up that kind of mechanism.” She bit her lip and picked at her fingernails. “It’s a double set of security measures—that’s why all Dungeon Lords had so much trouble with it. If they interrupt the signal, the internal self-destruct triggers. If they disable the self-destruct the signal teleports the Hero away.”

  “Exactly,” Ed said. “So far, we know for certain three things about the Heroes that the Dark does not: the signal, the self-destruct, and the power source.”

  “The power source, Lord Wright?” asked the intern.

  “It’s the thing the Hero construct uses to increase its own ley lines,” Lavy explained. “From the looks of it, they do it by directly stealing a dungeon’s energy output when they destroy the Seat. That’s not a thing a normal golem is able to do. I’d say that if we were to open up a Hero, we’d find some kind of device related to a Dungeon Lord.”

  Pholk deflated a bit. “An artifact in each Hero?! But there are hundreds of Heroes! Not even Heiliges has that kind of fortune…” The intern shuddered. “If they did, we’d be doomed.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, then,” Ed said. “We can learn more about the power supply by catching us a Hero and opening it up.”

  Lavy regarded him with a concerned glint in her eye. “And can you—us, I mean, can we do it? We just saw what happened when we tried to handle the double safety measures.”

  Ed massaged the stiffness in the back of his neck. “We can. Maybe. But the only way I can think of will be terribly dangerous.”

  “Of course it will,” Lavy said. She placed a hand on Ed’s shoulder, a surprisingly tender gesture, coming from her. “But we’re going to do it anyway, aren’t we?”

  “Oh, yes.” Ed grinned at her. “The good news is, if we get away with it… I think we just found a way to counter the Heroes. It won’t be a perfect solution, but it’s going to shift the odds in our favor.”

  Pholk ballooned in surprise. “Is that true, Lord Wraith? Have you finally ended the Heroes’ advantage against the Dark?”

  Ed shook his head and did his best to fight off an Alder-like urge to be mysterious until the very end. He lost. “Not exactly, Diviner Pholk. It’d be more accurate to say that Lavy was the one who did it.”

  Now it was Lavy’s turn to stare at him with wide-open eyes. “What are you talking about? Me?”

  “All this time, it’s been right in front of us,” Ed explained. “The dish you created? The towers we’re building? That’s our starting point. We don’t need advanced Scramblers. We need to build the Haunt a couple Signal Jamming Towers.” He paused for effect, then went on to say, “And then we build them all across Starevos.”

  22

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Hunting Monsters

  The crowd in the Waterside Market flowed through the streets like an angry river about to flood—yet somehow it never did. Fights started and ended, cut-purses made off with their loot or were mauled by angry sailors, and homeless men with glazed, pixie-dust eyes stared straight ahead while begging for coin. No one stopped to enjoy the scenery—there was not much to enjoy anyway, and a bit of sight-seeing would mark you as a tourist, and thus a target, to the street rats that littered the alleys and shadowy corners. The air was hot and damp and stank of rotten fish and horse dung. The streets were paved with mud, drug stands and brothels sprouting to the sides like weeds.

  In such a place as Constantina’s Waterside Market, few paid much attention to a pair of kaftar running errands. Kaftar were common enough in Undercity, but that wasn’t saying much. Despite non-humans being rare in Starevos, Undercity saw more intelligent species in a day than other Starevosi cities did in a lifetime.

  Minotaurs, slime people, satyrs, and centaurs, even the occasional triton defying the mighty tide to trade ashore.

  Few had seen a griffin up close, though. Griffins were Heiligian.

  In a way, Gallio knew he should have been shocked by the rampant degeneracy going on around him. From his vantage point near the corner of the street, he saw a group of ruffians, none older than twelve, pushing an elderly Witch Doctor to the ground and stealing his purse as he screamed bloody murder their way. The kids ran off as fast as they could while the man sprung to his feet and cast a shoddy, black-market version of arcane familiar, which sent a pair of fanged, red, flying fish soaring through the air until they struck the back of one kid and sent him careening face-first into the mud, smoke pouring from the charred skin of his back.

  Next to Gallio, Alvedhra tensed. He put a calming hand on her shoulder. “Easy there. Let the Watch handle it.” He nodded at the rag-tag group of men that sauntered over to the fallen kid. They carried heavy sticks and round iron helmets that looked like inverted soup dishes. Once they reached the kid, who didn’t look in any shape to move, they used their sticks to make damn sure.

  “They are little more than thugs themselves,” Alvedhra pointed out, doing her best to act nonchalant. Half the Watch dragged the unconscious kid away while the other half kept the merchant from charging at the boy, laughing as they did so.

  “They are hired thugs,” Gallio muttered. “Most of the professional guards were pulled into Mullecias Heights a few days ago. These bullies with sticks are the best the Waterfront can afford.”

  “The Militant Church is strong enough to protect itself,” said Alvedhra. “And shouldn’t we be the ones stopping them, anyway? We know that most criminals hang in these lower districts. Why can’t we raid their hideouts and capture them all in one swoop? I’m sure the Light can’t abide by us turning a blind eye to what goes here.”

  Gallio shook his head while keeping an eye on the pair of kaftar that pretended to mull over a fruit stand half a block away. “The Inquisitor’s role is to defeat the Dark. Petty crime is not our job.” He gave a surreptitious nod at Cleric Zeki and Inquisitor Hector, who were watching the kaftar from the other end of the street. They returned the nod—all was good on their end as well. “Besides, you cannot imprison water between your fists. Water does what water does—it flows out. If we were to raid the Waterside like you suggest, the criminals would do what they do—they’d scram. Sure, we could catch quite a few of them, but the others would avoid the Waterside from that point on. They’d become much harder to keep an eye on, and they’d spread out their bases and operations to honest, hard-working districts.”

  Alvedhra let out a sharp whistle. “Are you saying we let crime run rampant by the Waterside to keep Mullecias Heights from being bothered?”

  “I’m saying that anyone who steps into the Waterside knows what they’re getting into,” Gallio said without looking at her. “Now focus, Alvedhra.” He pointed with his nose at the distant kaftar, who had left the fruit stand while Gallio was speaking. “They’re on the move.”

  The Inquisitors left their posts and followed. Gallio could feel the sweat soaking his civilian clothes, and moving without the familiar weight of his sword felt wrong, as if he’d walked out the door of his quarters that morning without wearing trousers. Additionally, the shirt’s cut was too loose and exposed. It felt like being naked. He much preferred his coarse Inquisitorial gambeson, the comfortable weight of his armor pressing over it.

  He waded through the crowd with a casual stroll. He kept his head down and
his brow furrowed as if he had somewhere urgent to go and wasn’t the mood for trouble. It still didn’t stop a pair of pickpockets, working in tandem, from trying their luck at his bag. He reached down and caught someone’s hand near his belt. He broke it without looking at the man’s face, whose whines grew weaker and weaker as Gallio walked away.

  People left him alone after that.

  The kaftar were far too short for Gallio to make them out among the crowd, but Zeki’s shaved head was unmistakable, with an array of white scars drawing maps among the sunburnt skin. Gallio followed Zeki and Hector, matching their pace as to keep the unseen kaftar between the two groups.

  The chase had lasted all morning and most of the afternoon. It had begun outside the city’s walls, near the jagged hills of the farm-land, so close to the neighboring villages that Gallio’s heart had raced for hours in his chest. Thankfully, the two kaftar hadn’t met with any villager; they’d simply checked their surroundings, and then went into an underground storage camouflaged by carefully placed underbrush.

  Gallio and the others, following Oak’s orders, had crept up to the storage, disabled the alarm spells, and discovered a rough, drone-made cavern with a few left-over sacks of grain. Judging by the smell, the storage had been filled with ale or beer, and it had been recently emptied. Further exploring had revealed a tight tunnel lit by magical torches, with railway tracks set over the ground. Alvedhra had found signs of recent kaftar presence—hair and their rotten-meat scent—all over the place.

  After a brief chat, the team had decided the tracks were like a dwarven mining system used to move people and ore across the vast underground distances of the mountains. Zeki had used a mapping spell to determine that the tunnel led straight to Undercity. They could’ve raced after the kaftar and captured them right then, but that would’ve only netted the Inquisition two underlings who probably knew little useful information about the Dungeon Lord and the extent of his infestation among the locals.

  Still, Oak had been of the mind that Master Enrich should send the Heroes right then and there to burn the Haga’Anashi campsite to the ground.

  Gallio had dissuaded him. They needed the Haga’Anashi for a little longer. If the Inquisition could map Lord Wright’s presence, dungeons, and activities, they could extricate him in one strike that minimized innocent loss of life, and even catch him off guard—away from any Portal that may allow him to run and fight another day.

  So they’d come to Undercity well away from the tunnel, and had tracked the two kaftar by inquiring among the local informers and homeless population, who were always willing to divulge information if you knew how to entice them to talk. Finding the kaftar again had taken hours, but eventually word came that two Haga’Anashi were headed for the Waterfront.

  At some point, the kaftar had offloaded their booze cargo and ditched their cart, which meant they had had inside help among the city’s locals. This spelled bad news for everyone. It lowered the chances that innocent life would be spared in the crossfire. Gallio hoped to Alita’s mercy that those yet unknown helpers merely aided the Haga’Anashi in smuggling black-market booze and did not understand that the kaftar were working with a Dungeon Lord. Perhaps that could spare them.

  But he didn’t like their chances. With any luck, the taverns that bought the booze could be spared, but still… it was Oak’s call. And if there was even a tiny chance that Wright had doused the booze with anything, the death-toll would rise to everyone who had patronized those taverns… No. The thought was too terrible to contemplate.

  It was in Alita’s hands now. The only thing Gallio and the others could do was keep finding out as much as they could. Information would save innocent lives, so he planned to sleep as little as possible over the following days, relying on his Inquisitor’s talents to keep him going. They were in a race against time, after all, because the longer they waited the more likely the risk that Wright would try something nasty.

  Even though the clan would be spared for a little while longer, there was no saving these two. The Inquisition needed to move fast, and the pair could give them names and locations.

  Not even the Heiligian population knew this side of the Inquisitorial calling. Most of the tracking was done without much magic, and that was the trick. Dungeon Lords loved to counter the Church’s Diviners, but most of them forgot to cover their physical tracks. The Bards enjoyed to harp about battles and fire, about hard justice and necessary sacrifice, but in reality, most of Gallio’s career had been spent on the road or on the streets, chasing at some lead or some suspect, always gathering information, and only rarely getting into a fight.

  Sometimes he thought that, with the advent of Heroes, the Inquisitors were slowly being relegated to scouting jobs. Find the Dungeon Lord’s lair, locate his secondary Portals, and then send the Heroes to do the dirty work.

  It wasn’t exactly true, though. Dungeon Lords were the Dark’s main weapon against the Light, but not the only one. Gallio’s work involved chasing away at hidden cultists among the common folk, tracking down the source of undead infestations, finding and destroying Necromancer’s cabals, and so on—a never-ending list. It was as if, for every Dark follower he killed, two more took their place. And it wasn’t only the Lotians doing it. No one was free from the danger of Murmur’s corruption. A Heiligian who had fallen upon hard times was only one desperate pact away from a road to the Mantle or to Necromancy, for example.

  Kaftar, though, had a way of ending up on the wrong side of the law more often than elves or dwarves. It was in their nature to look for trouble, in Gallio’s opinion. This particular clan, the Haga’Anashi, was always eager for a fight—more so than their cousins. The Militant Church had ignored their antics for a while thanks to the useful services they lent to the Starevosi, but Gallio was sure that it was a state of affairs due for a change very soon. The Inquisition now had evidence of the Haga’Anashi aiding a Dungeon Lord.

  These two kaftar would find that out soon enough. They had stopped, so Gallio did the same. Alvedhra and him scanned the crowd, searching for whatever it was the kaftar waited for. A pair of Akathunians hidden by their dark cloaks led a line of a dozen slaves in the middle of the street, with hired mercenaries forcing the crowd to part. One of the slaves, a male naga, gave Alvedhra a pleading look as they passed. His face was so covered in bruises it was hard to make out his features, but the red head and the tribal tattoos on his arms told Gallio the naga had come from Plekth. That naga was a long way from home.

  And so was he.

  Gallio closed his hand into a fist. What part of, ‘If you deal with the Dark’s envoys, the Inquisition will burn you alive,’ was so hard to understand? And yet people did it anyway, and they had the gall to beg for mercy when inevitably caught, and then the Inquisitors would hear their screams when they closed their eyes for years and years, up to the point where their conscience couldn’t stand it any longer and, against all orders, they’d forgive the life of a young orphan captured among the minions of some minor Dungeon Lord in the middle of nowhere, a kid who had only accepted the pact under threat of torture. How could Alita possibly demand the Inquisitors to take such an innocent life? Hadn’t the kid suffered enough?

  So they would let the kid go in secret, and then it would turn out that the Dungeon Lord had wanted to increase the strength of his minions so he’d infected them all with werewolf’s saliva. The Inquisitors would only find this out come full moon, when the kid transformed into a murderous beast that would go through a bloody rampage in the Church’s hospital, killing and maiming dozens until put down by the very same Inquisitors that had spared him the first time.

  Those Inquisitors would then be forced to face the extent of their sins—of their failure. They’d look at the broken remains of the people killed by the werewolf, and they’d weep as they brought peace to the few survivors, who were now infected by the beast’s saliva. All those innocent lives lost because they hadn’t been brave enough to do what the Light required them to do. Most o
f them had taken their own lives afterward.

  One of the survivors would be sent into exile, his faith broken and his honor lost. He would be shipped off to Starevos, where at least he would do some good. He’d find jobs as a mercenary and then as a Sheriff among the local population, and he’d slowly rebuild whatever could be salvaged of his faith and his conscience.

  And then, just as he thought he could find a measure of peace, the Sheriff would stumble onto the path of another innocent, this one a young man from another world who had been tricked by the Dark to forge a pact with conditions he couldn’t possibly comprehend.

  It was as if history repeated itself. The stream of innocents to feed the Dark’s hunger was never-ending.

  The Sheriff had renewed his vow to the Light, because he was needed once more, and there was no one else to answer the call. And as sometimes happens with those who lose their faith and then find it again, it came back stronger, and the light of the sunwave—the mark of Alita’s chosen—shone on Starevosi land by his hand.

  He was unworthy. What Alita was saving him for, he didn’t know. At the time, he’d thought himself so clever. He’d found a way to save everyone. By sparing the life of the Dungeon Lord, he’d saved the people he’d lived amongst. What evil could Edward Wright do? He would either resist the temptation of power and remain hidden all his life, or he’d quickly be defeated by the Heroes, like Kael Arpadel before him, and hundreds of Dungeon Lords before both of them.

  Gallio had never expected Wright to resist. He’d never expected him to fight back. And he’d never expected him to thrive.

  It was no wonder that the Militant Church’s tenets demanded for the Inquisitor to lay down his conscience and allow Alita to deliver judgment instead, even when the sentence was terrible and inhumane.