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

by Hugo Huesca

  His minions hurried to follow his command, and the piles of webbed and paralyzed bodies slowly piled up as the horned spiders came and went in all directions. Meanwhile, the Haga’Anashi kept their blowpipes and bows aimed at the bubble, most of them at the spellcaster, who bit his lip and examined the scene, deep in thought. He seemed to reach a decision. He looked back over his shoulder. “When I drop the shield, get everyone you can inside. Don’t put a foot outside the circle—if they attack us, I’ll activate the circle and leave you stranded.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!” bellowed war-hammer.

  “Harmon, be reasonable. You cannot retake the city if you’re dead,” Bartheny pleaded. “The Heroes will handle it, as always. Let’s use this chance to regroup and gather our strength.”

  Ed lacked the time to stand by and watch. Now that his chances at making peace with the Summoned Hero were gone forever, time was of the essence. He turned to leave.

  At that moment, someone clapped behind his back. Everyone in the garden turned to see a mauled man painfully shuffle his way into the garden. His face was a mess of multi-colored bruises, and his torn shirt was bloody. Two kaftar darts protruded from his shoulders. His right leg had a slash above the knee, and he needed to use the Haga’Anashi spear he carried as a walking stick.

  Despite all this, he moved with such confidence that he was half-way to Ed before his spider warriors realized the man was an Inquisitor, and began to close in on him. Ed raised a hand, gesturing at them to stop.

  “I was wondering when you’d appear, Inquisitor,” he told Gallio.

  A curtain of rain fell across the city, buffeted by a heavy wind. The Inquisitor and the Dungeon Lord faced each other, surrounded on one end by Ed’s minions and on the other by the Inquisitors protected by Hatter’s magic. Ed drew his sword, but kept it aimed down for the moment.

  “So, you’re killing Inquisitors now,” Gallio shouted, as to be heard over the storm. “I figured the day would come. But it still pains me to see it.”

  “Isn’t that Chieftain Kagelshire’s spear?” Ed asked. “You are allowed to kill him, but we cannot defend ourselves?”

  The Haga’Anashi jerked to attention at the news. A few of them had recognized the spear already. Some began to move toward Gallio, rage shining in their eyes. Ed showed them his open palm. Stop. He’s mine.

  Gallio shook his head. “I regret what I had to do. But I was fighting to save innocent lives.”

  “And I’m fighting to keep your dear Inquisitors from killing any more innocent people,” Ed said. Other than them, the entire garden had gone quiet.

  “And earning a city in the process is only a happy side-quest?”

  “That’s right. Are we going to talk all day? Because you’re in the way of my conquering.”

  Gallio shook his head sadly. “I look at you and can barely see the young man I met in Burrova. You stand like a Dungeon Lord, friend Edward, and even talk like one. Proud. Powerful. Dark. The sunwave would tear you apart in a second.”

  “If you still had spells for the day, you’d have used them already,” Ed said, chuckling mirthlessly, a sound that was lost in the storm. He raised his sword at the Inquisitor in challenge. “You can barely move, Inquisitor. Get out of my way.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ed could see that Hatter had dropped the shield while he thought Ed wasn’t watching. The Inquisitors, this time, chose the rational approach and instead of jumping out of the circle to their deaths were hurrying quietly to drag the webbed prisoners inside. Gallio, who was facing the circle, had to be aware of this, so he was probably buying time in case Ed changed his mind.

  “Will you kill me if I don’t, Edward?” the Inquisitor asked.

  Ed blinked. I should, he thought. He was perfectly aware that, if he let Gallio and the others go tonight, they’d come back to bite him in the ass later, when they’d recovered. They wouldn’t care that he’d showed them mercy. If the places were switched, right now, he’d either be dead or subject to unthinkable torture.

  A rational villain would have just killed the plucky adventurers and been done with it. Back on Earth, Ed, Mark, and Lisa, always made fun of the bad guys who had their heroes at their mercy early in the game’s story, and then allowed them to leave either by pride or incompetence—usually both.

  Ed only needed to give the order. These assholes weren’t even plucky adventurers. By letting them leave, he’d be risking the lives of more innocent people. The Dungeon Lord opened his mouth.

  Is that how I think of myself now? he thought suddenly. As the villain? Sure, the Inquisition insisted he was. The rest of the world insisted he was. But the Haunt thought otherwise. His friends thought otherwise. They were so sure in their conviction that right now they were out there, putting their lives at risk because they believed that what they were doing was worth it.

  How would they feel if they could see him right now? He’d seen Korghiran’s futures. One of them was gone—erased by Objectivity—and the other two ended with him alone, one way or the other, having sacrificed or lost his everything along the way.

  Korghiran had shown him his future, but not the Haunt’s, because in her futures, the Haunt had none.

  And that would not do.

  Even if Gallio was right, even if he was more in tune to the Dark now than ever, Ed least could strive to be half the man Klek believed him to be.

  With this decision, it was as if some heavy weight was lifted from his shoulders.

  Korghiran’s future had been only a possibility. It was on Ed to build the one he wanted, not some shady artifact owned by a princess of Hell. And the card in Ed’s pocket showed three men, not two. The Summoned Hero was gone, but Gallio was still alive.

  Even if Ed couldn’t fathom a way for Gallio and himself to ever work together… Well. A practical villain would execute the Inquisitor because, after all the pain and death they’d inflicted on each other, it was a given that Gallio would fight him one day and possibly kill him. So executing the Inquisitor while he was weak and unable to cast the sunwave was the rational approach.

  But sometimes heroes had to take a leap of faith. And between opting to be a rational villain or a hero, Ed knew what option the guy who arrived at Ivalis with clear eyes and a clean conscience would have chosen.

  Ed smiled and raised his sword in challenge. “I’ll kill you myself, Inquisitor, right where you stand, with all your friends watching.” After all, he couldn’t just let Gallio go. The Inquisitors would suspect that the man was allied with the Dungeon Lord. So Ed had to get creative. And he seemed to recall Gallio having a personal talent that allowed him to read people when they lied to him.

  Gallio blinked, then paled. He grasped the spear with both hands. “In that case, we don’t have anything else to say to each other.”

  Then he launched Kagelshire’s spear right at Ed’s face with blinding speed.

  “Gallio, no!” Hatter screamed.

  Ed shifted his weight to the side and pivoted in place, throwing his left arm up and closing his hand into a fist. He caught the spear by the shaft and was driven backward a step by sheer momentum. And then Gallio was in front of him, brandishing a nicked short sword that had seemingly come out of thin air.

  So you’re not as wounded as you acted, after all, Ed thought as the Inquisitor launched a stab aimed at his neck.

  Sparks flew as Ed drew a lazy arc with his sword and parried Gallio’s blade with the flat of his, pushing it away only enough for both blades to miss his neck by millimeters. “Stone pillar!” Ed roared, aiming at a spot behind him and counting down in his head. Gallio tried to tackle him while at the same time wrestling to drive both swords against Ed’s neck, but Ed was expecting it, and no matter how iron-clad Gallio’s will, the Inquisitor was only running on fumes, while the Dungeon Lord was fresh and burning with energy.

  Ed elbowed Gallio in the jaw with his sword arm, then stepped forward and into the Inquisitor’s tackle, throwing his left shoulder under the Inquisitor’s ch
est and shooting upward using his back, in a motion not unlike a bull launching a bullfighter into the air.

  Gallio landed on his chest and rolled away trying to right himself, but the ground underneath him rose up as if the earth itself was trying to punch the Inquisitor out. He flew backward, hands uselessly reaching for the sky. At the same time, the pillar stood in the way of the couple of Inquisitors, including the war-hammer man, forcing them to remain put for a brief second.

  “That’s for Kagelshire,” Ed told Gallio as he landed on his ass…

  …only a few feet away from Hatter’s magical circle. “Now is our chance!” the spellcaster screamed. “Get him!”

  The Inquisitors didn’t waste a moment. Two of them jumped out of the circle and dragged Gallio in at about the same time the Haga’Anashi’s darts struck them. Ed opened his mouth to order his men to stand down, but it was too late—a volley of arrows flew through the air just as Hatter’s hand struck the circle’s runes and a blinding flash engulfed the garden.

  The arrows flew around the stone pillar, past the now-empty circle, then harmlessly bounced off of the wall behind. Ed and his minions stood in silence in the deserted mansion, rain sliding down their faces, thunder roaring in the distance.

  “Damn it all,” Ed said, covering his head with his cloak as to hide his grin as rain dropped down his hair. “Foiled again.”

  Ed could feel his new dungeon grow through Undercity’s entrails, bit by bit, tendril by tendril, avoiding certain areas and hurrying through others, always moving, always avoiding an unseen enemy. In a way, it was like watching the spread of a virus from afar.

  Kes and the others were at the farthest point, leading the charge, risking their lives to save the city. As Ed stood at the highest point of the mansion’s wall while his troops finished their retreat, he could guess where Kes was headed—a black tower like a needle rising up among the smaller guilds of the merchant district. That would make for a fine spot for the Jamming Tower.

  It was also heavily defended. Since it was located near Undercity’s downtown, most of the Heroes would be there, as well as the griffin riders not currently headed back to Mullecias. Ed knew that, all across his home-world, players everywhere would be waiting for the endgame of the World Event to show up—the final Boss, the one that a lucky party would face to finish the storyline.

  Well. Better not to keep them waiting. If they wanted a Boss fight, then Ed would give them one to remember.

  “I’m afraid I’ll need your help once more, Queen Gloriosa,” Ed told the albino Queen. He pointed at the black tower in the distance. “That’s where I’m headed. That’s where the Haunt rises or falls.”

  “Then it’s an honor to be a part of our history,” Gloriosa said, polite as always, like only royalty could be.

  Ed climbed up the Spider Queen, and then turned to his troops, who were waiting outside the mansion’s walls. “We’re headed toward the city’s center. There’s no time to lose, so anyone not fast enough to follow should hide until it all blows over,” he told them, his voice booming through the storm. “I’m not going to lie—most of us will be dead by the end of the night. Out there—” he raised his sword up into the air “—is a world that believes we’re little more than pests to be rid of and forgotten about! Tonight, that changes. Tonight, we’re not hiding anymore! Let’s teach the Inquisition that it’s them who should fear us!”

  And with that, without turning to see if they were following, Ed and Gloriosa rode for the heart of Undercity, skittering through rain and thunder past the great parks of Mullecias, down the grassy hills and white paved paths that separated it from the rest of the city, and then into tight streets partially flooded. In the distance, Ed could see his dungeon still growing, the tunnels reaching for the ground beneath the tower like a drowning man reaching for the shore.

  He rummaged through his belt, found a vitality potion, and downed it. At once, his body perked up as energy flooded into him. He was going to need it.

  “We may get intercepted along the way,” Gloriosa warned him. “My brood isn’t exactly hard to spot from above.”

  Ed’s eyes shone with the Evil Eye as he activated his dungeon vision as soon as he entered into contact with the dungeon below. “Don’t worry about that,” he said as his view rose and rose until they were but a small pale dot running through a labyrinth of streets and alleyways. “I’ll tell you exactly where to go.”

  He could see Gloriosa’s cluster following after them like a white tide, and the Haga’Anashi running among them, fast and nimble, eager for one last fight.

  29

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Tower Defense

  “Three Necros on our tail,” Lisa said, her fingers dancing across the keyboard with practiced agility. “They’re comboing rot cloud with weakness to disease, zombie-enhancing auras are up. We’re probably heading into an ambush. Omar, mind fireballing that open sewer over there? The last zombies came from under the city.”

  She countered the weakness to disease with a couple blessings, targeting Omar and Ryan and trusting Mark and herself to resist the curses on their own. Lisa used that extra time to blow the rot cloud away with a stormwind. Since Undercity registered rain and heavy winds, the spell was empowered enough to blow the sickly brown cloud back to the Necromancers, who coughed as tears of pixelated blood oozed down their cheeks.

  Omar threw a blind fireball down the sewer, and parts of zombies flew out. Lisa grinned. Before the Necromancers had time to recover, Rylan Silverblade was among them, Lisa’s blessings protecting him momentarily from the cloud. The Rogue disemboweled the Necromancers using sneak attack, scimitars shining a muted purple. All things considered, thin men running around in tunics were not that hard to kill, once you got up close and personal.

  “This is the most fun I’ve had in months,” Mark said. “They just keep coming!”

  It was as if Pantheon had given up all semblance of realism, because the sheer variety of creatures they’d fought all over the city was staggering. Horned spiders, Thieves, elite kaftar, Assassins, cultists and Necromancers, lots of undead—she’d even seen a vampire flying nearby—an unlucky group of batblins, corrupted watchmen, ogres, Witch Doctors, pirates, smugglers, and many more.

  Usually, a dungeon kept to a single group of creatures or one solid theme, but this was why World Events were so fun. The city was throwing so much shit at them that even high-leveled Heroes like them were running out of potions and daily powers. Lisa estimated that about a third of the original parties had been taken out as the Event started, but even old players that hadn’t logged on in a while were now joining in as their friends called them up.

  It wouldn’t be long until the city was theirs. The only question on everyone’s minds was, who would be the first to have a crack at the final Boss? After all, that was where the best loot was found. And, of course, the bragging rights, which were just as important.

  The only thing marring her enjoyment was that not everyone in the group had fun under pressure. And Ryan was the kind of guy who made sure that, if he wasn’t having fun, no one else would.

  “Damn it, Lisa!” he squeaked over the chat. “That cloud shit ruined my damn Endurance, why didn’t you use Aucrath’s Might instead?”

  Lisa rolled her eyes, feeling like a balloon had deflated inside her chest. “I spent it on Mark so he could keep aggro on the mutated crocodiles—I told you that three times!” If he’d waited only a bit longer for the cloud to disperse, he wouldn’t have gotten the debuff, but he’d wanted to get the damn kills himself.

  “Learn how to play! Mark’s job is to tank—if he can’t do it without your buffs then that’s his problem!”

  Rylan Silverblade advanced forward, closer to the city center, forcing the other three players to follow him before they had time to heal back up to full, because otherwise they’d split the party and Ryan would blame them. It had been like that since the beginning. “Come on!” he hollered. “The Boss is right after this corner,
I just know it!”

  Instead, they reached an area already scoured clean by other players. It was a merchant district, judging by the size of the houses and the markets. Lisa could see a few remaining Heroic parties hanging around, replenishing their HP and searching for loot or hidden enemies.

  She checked her Quest-log and found a small alert that called all available Heroes to Mullecias District—an area whose access had been previously blocked so far. It made sense as a location for the final battle. “I think we went the wrong way,” she pointed out, growing more frustrated by the second.

  There was no way they’d reach Mullecias in time. She’d been looking forward to that Boss fight so badly.

  After all the shit she had to deal with on a daily basis, the weird sensation of being watched at night, Ryan’s bullshit, her inability to land another job, even things like Ed’s disappearance… It was strange. A part of her seemed to believe that, if she could only have one more evening of honest fun, like the old times, when she was young and without a care in the world… one more night like that and she’d be able to deal with her shit. To finally do what needed to be done, the things she’d been postponing for so long.

  But, of course, that chance was now gone. She’d have to spend the night listening to Ryan whine.

  You know, you could’ve gone by yourself, a small part of her thought. What are you waiting for, someone else to give you permission? It’s been like this for years, Lisa. At some point, you need to start making your own decisions and living with them.