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

by Hugo Huesca

  He threw Lavy one last confused glance, and then stepped forward. The others were assembled in a wedge in front of him, like a General rallying his officers before a civil war.

  “A few days ago, we lost contact with our Haga’Anashi agents in Undercity,” Ed announced. “We’ve reasons to believe the Militant Church were the ones behind it—our friends in the Thieves Guild confirmed it.” He fought off the urge to pace around the room, fully aware of the need to present himself as calm and collected. “Through the spiderling grapevine we’ve confirmed sightings of heavy Inquisitorial activity inside and outside the city, as well as all nearby Heroic teams heading toward the city. The Thieves Guild is in contact with us through message, and they just confirmed that all the city gates have been closed off. We know what that means.” He didn’t need to add the rest—it’s Burrova all over again. Back then, Ranger Ioan had decided to purge the village. Today, the Inquisition would do the cleansing. And tens of thousands of people would pay with their lives.

  Chatter spread through his minions. He heard exclamations of fear, and anger, and disbelief.

  “They’ll never stop,” someone said. “They’ll never stop hunting us.”

  “I have family in the city!”

  “You were supposed to stop this!”

  “Hogbus, have mercy…”

  Klek was so small compared to the others that people barely realized he was making his way through the crowd. Still, he kept at it, pushing and shoving until the others caught on and let him through. “So,” the Adventurer’s Bane said once he was at the front. “What’s the plan, Lord Ed?” He didn’t appear the least bit afraid, except for a slight tremor in his knees that only Ed noticed. “How do we win?”

  “We cannot survive against the Heroes!” Brett snarled, his lip trembling.

  Klek turned to the Governor with such fierceness that the man, who was several times his size, stepped back in surprise. “If you think that, then sit back and watch me! I’ll be the first!”

  Ed and the batblin looked at one another. Faintly, Ed nodded. Thank you, Klek. “He’s right,” he said aloud. “Undercity’s fate concerns all of us. One way or the other, we put them in this situation. And I don’t know about you, but I won’t be able to sleep ever again if I let this happen without doing a thing to stop it. That’s not the Haunt’s way. It’s not my way.”

  The chatter died down to a vague buzzing, and then faded to tense silence. Ed held the gaze of everyone in the room. Finally, it was Heorghe who spoke first. “Fine. Other than letting Klek loose in Mullecias Heights and having him solo the entire Inquisition, what do you need me to do?” he asked.

  Ed grinned. “I’m going to need that enchanted sword, Forgemaster. And make sure all my warriors have the best armor and weapons available to us. Favor speed over everything else, though.” He shifted his gaze across the room. “Here’s the plan. We will head to Undercity, and we’re going to build a dungeon inside Nicolai’s catacombs. After, we’ll evacuate the slums. Then we’re going to build one hell of a special Tower, and we’re going to send every damn Hero back to their masters. And once that’s done…” His Evil Eye blazed with intense green fury, bathing the stone in terrible firelight. “Then we shall make it so those monsters that call themselves the good guys won’t get to hurt us ever again.”

  26

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Western Gate

  Mature hell chickens weren’t in heat as often as the younger ones. This was crucial, and the very reason Alder and Lavy watched nervously in the middle of the forest, about half a mile away from the Haunt, as Ed’s drones finished the preparations for their part in Undercity’s defense.

  Blood Fiend and Scar, their hell chicken mounts, eyed the pair as best as their eye slits allowed. Lavy had dabbed a bit of an old handkerchief in Kaga’s… concoction—she refused to think further about it—then pocketed it. It had worked like a charm, reducing the mounts’ aggression from “Every breath you take fills me with hatred” to “I’ll kill you later, when I’ve got some free time.”

  “Are you sure about this?” Alder asked, eyeing the waiting drones nervously.

  The drones waited for their command, standing above a pile of rocks about Lavy’s height. One of them smiled mischievously at Lavy, as if it knew what she’d have to do soon enough.

  “Of course I am not,” she muttered. “I’d rather be anywhere else, Alder, including back in Heines’ dungeon.” She flexed her fingers to prepare them for spellcasting if the need arose. “But our friends—ah, our coworkers—are counting on us, and if we fail people may die. That would be terrible for my reputation. We cannot allow it.”

  Alder grimaced. “At least if we stumble and they catch up with us, no one will be left to tell the story of how we died. That’d be one tale I’d rather not pass into posterity.”

  “Great, asshole, thanks for reminding me,” Lavy said, shuddering. Behind them, she was almost sure she could see piles of smoke coming from Undercity. At this distance that could only mean the entire city was at risk.

  Ed was there, as well as Kes, and Klek, and everyone else. When night came, even that bitch Jarlen would head over and do her best.

  Lavy was terrified out of her wits. But the Haunt lacked the disposable numbers to oppose the Heroes… with one exception. And someone had to bring it to them before it was too late. “Let’s get it over with,” she said quietly.

  Pale-faced, Alder summoned five illusions of himself and doused them with two entire vials of Kaga’s concoction. Lavy pinched her nose. The smell was despicable. Next to her, Scar craned its neck in confusion at the illusions.

  Before she could change her mind, Lavy mounted up onto Scar, and Alder did the same with Blood Fiend. Both hell chickens exchanged confused glances as their tiny prehistoric brains tried and failed to process the terrible series of events that were about to happen.

  At Lavy’s signal, the drones collapsed the pile of stones, creating a slanted tunnel below that it created a ramp up. The wind blew the concoction’s aroma into the tunnel, which connected with one of the Haunt’s hell chicken breeding grounds.

  Almost at once, the ground trembled.

  Scar craned its neck as far as it could and glanced at Lavy with one wide-open red eye.

  She bent forward and pulled the reigns in Undercity’s direction as Alder’s illusions began to move. “Run,” she urged it. “By all the gods, run!”

  She didn’t need to tell it twice.

  “Nimble feet!” Alder exclaimed somewhere behind her as the two hell chickens jumped over root and fallen tree trunk in a desperate dash toward the city, with a veritable stampede of horny hell chickens following close behind, crushing everything under their step. “Nimble-fucking-feet!”

  The Western Inquisitorial Team was one of the many squads deployed over the last few hours. Their mission was simple—nothing goes in and no one goes out until the Heroes are done with Undercity.

  WIT consisted of a dozen Inquisitors and twenty Militant soldiers. It was led by Inquisitor Dismas, a veteran who had held the rank of Captain during the Starevosi war. He was a rugged man in his early thirties, trained for battle from a very young age. Dismas and the men under his command had been all hand-selected by Examiner Harmon himself, because WIT held a crucial position in the Inquisition’s strategy.

  Dungeon Lord Wraith’s area of influence, after all, was known to involve Hoia Forest and the neighboring regions. If Lord Wraith was to make an appearance, he’d need to pass through WIT first, not that Dismas was very worried about the possibility.

  He had encountered his fair share of Dungeon Lords and knew them to be a practical bunch. Wraith wouldn’t risk his forces against the sheer Heroic manpower gathering outside and inside the city, with more and more Heroic parties being summoned by the second. Despite Wraith’s growing power in the region, only a few Dungeon Lords of old would’ve been able to go toe to toe with the volume of Heroes that would be roaming the city in a couple hours.


  This was the Inquisitions’ trump card, and the reason they held captured cities with only a couple hundred specialist warriors and not thousands of soldiers.

  Still, Dismas looked up at the columns of smoke rising to the bleeding red sky, and at the tiny white sparks that danced through them in the distance—magic hawks, scouting the skies, ready to pinpoint the location of any enemy inside or outside the city. Even farther up, he thought he could see the silhouettes of the griffin riders as they glided through the clouds, but it could’ve been a trick of the eye. The air was tepid, and everyone was soaked in their own sweat under their armor. Most Inquisitors wore red leather under their plate, and leather was terrible for heat. Worst of all, there was no breeze to ease the temperature.

  “I don’t like this,” Inquisitor Tius said, somewhere behind him.

  Dismas regarded with a cold expression. “Would you doubt the piousness of our duty, Inquisitor?” It was one thing was to complain about the heat, but another entirely to break the tenets.

  The man frowned. “No, Eminence. I’m talking about our position.” He gestured at the surrounding terrain, the distant trees and underbrush, the plain rocky outcrops that circled the city walls, and at the iron gate looming behind them. “We’re too exposed. Even with our circles of respite denying the enemy as much terrain as we can, we cannot surround the city with the amount of clerics we’ve under our command.”

  It was a common complaint from the newer Inquisitors, wet behind the ears, with little to no real combat experience. Dismas knew that if the Examiners could’ve had a choice in the matter, there would’ve been enough Clerics in Starevos to surround the country itself with circles of respite and more. But only a few recruits had the fortitude of Spirit to become divine spellcasters, and every Cleric that was sent to Starevos was a Cleric taken away from Heiliges—where even nowadays, new dungeons sprouting up here and there was not an uncommon sight.

  He cleaned sweat from his face with a cloth, glancing down as he did so. A slight breeze made the yellowish grass tremble slightly, but did nothing to relieve him. He paid it no mind. He’d fought in worse conditions.

  Hell, the fact that Undercity’s Inquisitorial detachment had any Clerics or griffins at all was a testament to the city’s importance as a strategic port, because sure as shit it wasn’t kept around for its ugly sights or the ruffians that seemed to comprise its entire population.

  “We’ve enough forces to do our duty,” Dismas said. “Otherwise, the Examiners wouldn’t have sent us here. And we do have the advantage. If he’s coming, Lord Wraith must do so over clear terrain, with no place to hide for miles. Even if he brings an overwhelming number of minions, we’ll have enough time to see him coming, message for reinforcements, and mount a resistance right in front of the gates until the Heroes arrive and crush him.” After all, Heroes were the undisputed champions of direct combat, and few teams working in unison could make short work of hundreds of elite minions.

  Dismas wasn’t as sure of himself as he showed Inquisitor Tius. He’d fought against Dungeon Lords before. He knew they were a tricky bunch. Honorless, cruel, barely above the monsters they employed, in both morals and appearance.

  If Lord Wraith managed to get a hold of five or six Devil Knights, for example… things could get ugly. And he couldn’t forget that most Dungeon Lords’ favored terrain wasn’t aboveground, either. Technically, the Inquisitorial presence, as well as all the circles running everywhere in and outside the city, made the surrounding terrain contested, and thus impossibly slow for a Dungeon Lord’s drone to build a tunnel within.

  Unless, he thought, frowning at the glint of the sun in his eye and spitting something brownish on the dry grass, which the breeze was somehow making shake more and more despite Dismas being unable to feel the wind. A lone pebble rolled down a dirt slope. Dismas’ eyes widened. Unless those tunnels are already here…

  By the time the ground in front of him exploded upward in a shower of rock and dirt, Inquisitor Dismas already had his sword in his hand, had cast smite on it, and was in the process of barking orders to his team to rally around him. Then a horned spider the size of a warhorse charged like a boulder through the cloud of dust and ran him through with a horn like a lance.

  Dismas tasted blood as pain emanated from his ruptured belly and through his body like red heat. The world around him spun with terrible violence as the Spider Queen flicked her head with a roar, shaking him off her horn and sending him arcing through the air in a shower of his blood and guts.

  After hitting the ground, the Inquisitor clung to consciousness for long enough to see the horde of horned spider and kaftar engulf his WIT as it struggled to fight its way toward their fallen leader.

  And then it was darkness.

  The battle for the Western Gate was quick and brutal, only the start to what was sure to be a bloody night.

  Ed, Kes, and Kaga stormed out of the tunnels just after the clusters of Bumelia and Cornelia, the former being the one who took down the Inquisitors’ leader in one fell swoop.

  This time, there were no speeches, no demands of surrender, no taunts exchanged between former allies. There were about thirty members of the Militant Church out in the field, and they were dangerous. Not as dangerous as Heroes, but enough for the Haunt to bring its numbers to bear before the Clerics had time to layer buffs on the Inquisitors or the soldiers could pull aggro away from them.

  Ed rushed the field, sword in hand shining eldritch green, while his enchanted armor deflected bolts and arrows left and right. The battlefield was a scene of carnage. Horned spiders and Inquisitors clashed left and right, with strings of web soaring the air along with arrows and magic spells headed in opposite directions. In any other context, it would’ve almost been beautiful. But right under the lightshow and the explosions, people were dying.

  For only a brief instant did Ed doubt—when he saw Queen Bumelia bite a female Cleric of about Lavy’s age in half. Then he saw the smoke and heard the distant screams of the innocent people dying inside the city.

  When the Cleric’s friends tore through Bumelia’s royal guard and fell upon the Queen, spearing her over and over as devastating magic tore through her chitin, Ed roared and dove into battle.

  The entire Haga’Anashi clan followed behind, scores of Monster Hunters just like Kaga’s elite heading into battle brandishing exotic weapons, some of which Ed had never seen before. A few rode on strange mounts from exotic places, but the majority were infantry meant for infiltration and indirect combat. They wore light armor, if any—leather and hardened wood, with chain-mail here and there for Kaga’s close family, including his father, Kagelshire, a broad kaftar with a gray snout covered by a web of pink scars which marred his fur.

  The Inquisitors that killed Bumelia saw him coming and realized who he was at once, thanks to the furious Evil Eye that he wasn’t able to keep in check as adrenaline burned in his veins. One of them, a spellcaster, began a holy bolt that was cut short by a long, nasty dart protruding from his throat. The man gagged, and his eyes rolled over his head as he collapsed. The second one died when Kaga’s throwing knife pierced his eye. The third one managed to dodge most of the volley of darts and knives—he had a buff up, a golden carapace that protected him from the rest of the projectiles.

  Ed fell over him without thinking, his mind a blank canvas of violence and fury. His sword clashed against the Inquisitor’s, who jumped back to regain his footing and attempted to enter a dueling stance while barking, “Smite!” Just as the white energy shone through his blade, Ed tackled the man, catching his forearm as both rolled in the mud. Ed drained the Inquisitor’s Endurance using his black hand, and the man screamed in surprise and dropped his sword, which lost its enchantment as soon as contact with the caster was lost.

  It was strange. All of Kes’ training about techniques and stances, but in the middle of battle all of that theory just… faded away. Ed relied on his instinct to fight, and violence had always come naturally to him. He pushed the man ont
o the ground and struck the Inquisitor’s forehead with the sword pommel as hard as he could. There was a sickening crunch of bone giving way, and the Inquisitor’s forehead cracked back like an egg shell.

  Just like that. Dead. This time, he didn’t even know the man’s name. That was the second man Ed had killed. And he knew it wouldn’t be the last.

  Two Militant soldiers rushed Ed while far more tried to wade past the horned spiders and the Haga’Anashi to reach him. He had to concede it to the Inquisition—they knew their win conditions. So far, his minions had kept him safe from any fireball, but it was best to keep moving.

  And the best direction was forward. Toward the city where his people were dying.

  He rushed the soldiers, who raised their spears his way. Ed was only vaguely aware of Kes running alongside him, and then past him, wielding sword and round shield. The Marshal angled her shield just as she entered the reach of the first soldier’s spear. The man threw a lightning-fast strike forward, but Kes deflected it with her shield and then struck at the shaft with her sword, hard, throwing it into the ground and making the man stumble forward and lose his balance.

  The second soldier was already closing in on her. Ed activated his improved reflexes, and the world slowed down as he jumped right next to the spear’s path. He caught the wooden shaft with his black hand and pushed it away from Kes while continuing forward. He saw the terrified soldier’s expression as he found himself face to face with the Dungeon Lord, as well as the way the man’s eyes widened in surprise as Ed pushed his flaming green sword into his gut. A terrible black smoke escaped from the wound, and the soldier’s lips trembled before Ed wrenched the weapon out. The Militant fell, clutching his belly and screaming in silence.

  When Ed turned, Kes had cut down her soldier. “The Gate is ours!” she screamed through the cacophony of the battle.