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

by Hugo Huesca

  “Did the pheromones work?” Yumiya inquired.

  “Too well, I’d say,” Alder said. “I’d rather have them their usual angry selves than lusty and angry.”

  Outside in the plaza, the Heroes and the hell chickens fought a bloody, terrible battle. The spellcasters spammed crowd-control magic while keeping their tanks as buffed as possible, and the Haunt’s black creatures fell in droves. But there were only four or five Heroic groups in total, and there were hundreds of hell chickens, and only so much a tank could do when his team was flooded by a storm of murderous feathers and sharp beaks looking for the soft spots underneath their armor.

  Lavy hurried to Kes’ side. “The chickens won’t last long, and more Heroes are coming from Mullecias,” she told the Marshal. “What’s the plan?”

  “Is that tower tall enough for your dish?” Kes asked simply.

  “It’ll have to be,” Lavy said. “But I’ve no idea if it’ll work, Kes. Pholk and I didn’t have enough time to test it.”

  Kes nodded. “That’s the usual story with new gear. Let’s hope for the best, Lavy, but I swear if the thing explodes or fails to start I’m going to ground it back into sand.”

  “Well… you’re welcome to try. It’s sturdier than it looks,” Lavy said with a small grin.

  The Marshall stood and gestured at Alder and the others to group around her. Alder did so gladly, stepping closer to the kaftar as to steal a bit of their body heat for himself. He was shivering enough not to mind the kaftar’s wet-dog smell.

  “Here’s what we’ll do,” Kes said. “We’re going to reach that tower and bar it from inside while the drones hook up the dish to the city’s ley lines. Since the dish and the drones are our win condition, we’re going to form a circle around them and head to the tower by hugging the walls as much as we can. Then we’re going to run and hope for the best. Lavy, Alder, you’re our spellcasters. Do you have any juice left to help us out?”

  Lavy nodded. “Specters should come in handy. I mean, they always do… but hell chickens can’t strike them, since their claws aren’t magical. A zap or two from my specters should keep most of them away from us.”

  “I’m down to two incantations,” Alder said. Keeping his illusions up all the way from the Haunt had eaten through most of his spells. “I could nimble feet when it’s time to rush, and save a dazzling display in case the Heroes try to take a shot at us.” He was so tired that he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t pass out while using nimble feet again, but he kept that to himself.

  “Do it,” Kes said. “Everyone, take your positions. We’ll leave as soon as the flow of battle leaves us an opening.” As the kaftar, the guards, and the drones hurried to follow her command, she headed for the stairs, then seemed to change her mind. She strolled back to Alder and Lavy. “I’m proud of you two,” she told them. “Without the stint you pulled with the hell chickens, we’d all be dead by now. Whatever happens next, I’m glad to be your teacher.” She left without waiting for a response.

  Lavy and Alder exchanged glances. “What was that about?” Alder said quietly. “She went all sentimental all of a sudden. I mean, it’s nice, but she never does that unless she’s drunk.”

  The Witch smiled, but her lower lip was trembling a bit. “She thinks we’re all going to die,” she said.

  “Oh,” Alder said.

  One famous dwarven philosopher had engraved a musing in stone that said when a brave dwarf drew his last breath, he’d see the silver gates of the Great Mountain slide open, and his ancestors and late family would storm out to greet him and shower him in cold ale and gemstone necklaces. They’d carry him inside the Mountain Palace, where he’d be bathed and his beard braided before a huge feast was served in his honor.

  If the dwarf had been craven, though, the gates would never open. The Palace jester—an ugly creature that looked like a corrupted gnome—would appear to mock him, and the ground below the dwarf’s feet would collapse and draw him all the way to the heart of the world, where his flesh would be stripped from his bones, and then his bones would melt and become part of the liquid steel heart of Ivalis itself, and the dwarf would burn until the world fire died out.

  This is all to say that, when Oscor opened his eyes to see a weird amalgamation of a batblin and horned spider standing inches away from his face, he may have jumped to conclusions.

  “Stay away from me, you damn jester!” he roared, trying to drag himself away and punch the aberration at the same time, yet managing neither. Something was holding his legs in place. “Sod off, you fuck, I’ll fight you, I’ll fight you and the entire damn Palace! Do you think I’m a coward, ancestors? Well, come at me, then, I never liked you much anyway, you bunch of stuck-up pricks!”

  “What a loud little snack,” said the spider half of the Palace Jester. “And it doesn’t seem too happy about us saving his hide. Can I eat it now?”

  “No, Tulip,” said the batblin half. “We don’t eat the people we rescue, remember?”

  The horned spider seemed disappointed. Oscor blinked and did his best to clear the soot from his eyes with fists even dirtier than his face. He realized that the Palace Jester was, in fact, a batblin riding a horned spider princess.

  Ah, so I’m only hallucinating, he realized. Not dead yet… Ah. Sorry, ancestors.

  The batblin jumped off of the spider. “Don’t be afraid,” the critter told the dwarf. “My name’s Klek, and my friend here is Tulip. I am the leader of the Haunt’s Spider Riders. Lord Ed sent us to help. You’ll be safe now.”

  “Lord Ed, eh?” the dwarf chuckled darkly to himself. “So that’s why Ed is so weird. No wonder we’re in this mess.” He turned to look around at the ravaged alley. “Where are my friends?”

  “Right behind you, Boss,” Sköm said weakly. Oscor shifted painfully, still unable to move his legs—they were pinned down under a smoking beam. The fact that he wasn’t in absolute agony at the moment worried him.

  Sköm was surrounded by even more batblins riding spiders. There were about four more of them, all busy helping Oscor’s smugglers get out of the debris or administering first aid. One spider webbed Cimeko’s broken arm and bit her gently, using paralyzing venom to numb the pain. Oscor nodded in approval.

  “We’re ready,” Klek said. The batblin had been busy somewhere outside of Oscor’s field of view. When he reappeared, he was holding the end of several web-ropes, each connected to the beam crushing Oscor’s legs. The batblin slid a wooden slab under the beam, next to Oscor, and stood back. “Riders, let’s get this dwarf out!”

  Batblins and spiders hurried to heed their leader’s command, although Oscor could see they were worried—the explosions and the screams of the dying surrounded the alley, coming through the rain like the wailing of the damned. The battle for Undercity was far from over.

  “We need to hurry,” one nervous batblin told Klek, rubbing his hands and throwing furtive glances at the end of the alley. “The Heroes will arrive at any minute!”

  “Then let’s get him out fast, Vogkord,” Klek said. He handed one rope to Vogkord and another one to his spider. “On my command, pull with all you’ve got, Rose.”

  The Spider Riders disappeared from Oscor’s field of view again. A moment later, he could feel Cimeko’s comforting hand brushing his hair. “You’ll be fine,” Cimeko told him. A kind of warmth traveled down Oscor’s back, as if his body believed it quicker than his mind.

  Oscor shook the hand away. “Of course I will be! Go help my smugglers, we don’t have time for you to lie here!”

  At Klek’s command, the spiders and the batblins pulled with all their might. At first, nothing happened. Then, Oscor could see the beam shifting. He could feel it. It moved a millimeter. Maybe another. It’s not going to be enough, he thought, trying to pull himself out with all his strength.

  Then Cimeko was there, helping the riders, with Sköm besides Vogkord, doing his best with only one arm. Every smuggler who could still move joined them. Slowly, inch by inch, the weight of the beam
moved away from Oscor.

  And then he was free. Relief flooded through him. He made the mistake of looking at his legs, and a dizziness overcame him. Even with his dwarven toughness, his legs had been turned into bloody pulp.

  Klek’s spider, Tulip, fashioned a sort of swing out of webbing for Oscor. She and another spider shared the weight between them. They used another swing for one unconscious gnome, and then the riders and the smugglers skittered out into the streets in absolute silence.

  Oscor tried his best not to think of the bodies they’d left behind—Wufroc and Scappi and three other good, loyal men. He vowed to return, if he survived, and give them a proper burial.

  And for a second, he really believed he’d make good on his promise. The streets the batblins had chosen were empty, except for the bodies in pools of pink water and the devastation left in the Heroes’ wake.

  Then a peal of thunder ruptured the darkness and Cimeko screamed and Oscor raised his head to see the silhouette of the levitating Wizard hovering a hundred feet in front of them. All hope left the dwarf. He was wet and tired. Best to get it over with.

  “Oh, shit,” Klek whispered next to him. The batblin clutched his spear. “Riders! Let’s do what we do best! For the Haunt!”

  The batblins and the spiders roared in unison. And as one, they all ran for their lives.

  The drones carried the leather tarp with Lavy’s dish inside while Alder and the Witch ushered them forward. As the spellcasters, they were inside Kes’ circle formation, with the Marshal and the kaftar at the end covering the squishies and Lavy’s specters floating a few feet away, trying their best to mesh with the darkness and the rain to not attract any unwanted attention from the Heroes.

  A few hell chickens saw the group as they shuffled through the plaza while keeping close to the cover of the buildings. The specters flew down to meet them, zapping the creatures out of a couple points of Endurance. After a couple attempts, most hell chickens lost interest and headed back into the fray against the Heroes.

  The Akathunians’ tower was near the end and to the left of the plaza, next to the Brewers Guild headquarters—one of the most powerful “legit” Guilds in town, and technically the Haunt’s competition. Alder noted with a slight pleasure that the Guildhouse’s entrance had collapsed.

  The pleasure vanished when he saw the bodies heaped among the rubble.

  He clenched his jaw and marched on through the rain. In front of him, the kaftars kept their bows and blowpipes at the ready, in case a lucky hell chicken got through Lavy’s specters.

  He had no idea how long they walked. Time had no meaning with the carnage raging around him. It could’ve been seconds or minutes, but it felt like much more. Back in Elaitra, he’d read dozens, if not hundreds, of battle depictions written by Bards who had either been near the front lines or had interviewed soldiers who were.

  This was different. Even though neither the Heroes nor the hell chickens were humans, seeing a living creature being torn open by a broadsword and its insides splattering into a puddle lacked the glory and the honor that those Bards had claimed was found in combat.

  Could it be that there was something wrong with him? If he survived, he didn’t think he could find a way to describe the battle for Undercity as some sort of dance between glorious foes. His eyes could only see the blood and the guts and the very human-looking bodies that he and the others sometimes stepped past—they were the unlucky merchants that hadn’t managed to evacuate in time.

  Where was the honor in this? Where was the glory?

  I’ll show them, Alder vowed as he walked past the broken body of a half-elf wearing a yellow dress. I’ll show them the truth.

  For that, though, he needed to survive first.

  Alder could swear he saw a cloud of purple mist soar through the battle and hover above them for an instant. Kes raised a fist and pointed a finger at the tower, and the mist shot in that direction. “It’s open terrain from here to the tower,” Kes told the group. “Get ready, Alder. On my mark!”

  Around the Bard, everyone tensed, including the drones. Lavy gestured at her specters and they broke the circle, forming a wedge in front of the group as to force the surviving hell chickens in their way to move aside.

  “Here goes nothing,” Alder said.

  Kes waited a few seconds, reading the ebb and flow of the battle in a way that escaped Alder. “NOW!” she exclaimed suddenly.

  “Nimble feet!” Alder yelled as he ran. The effort almost floored him—his vision blurred, and he could only follow the shapes of his friends as he fought against cold and exhaustion. With a trembling hand, he procured the last vitality potion in his belt and downed it in a single gulp. It helped only a bit, since drinking several potions in close succession reduced their potency—and he’d needed to down a few just to keep the nimble feet up all the way from the Haunt.

  Reaching the tower felt like wading through hell. Alder feared that if he slipped, he’d lack the strength to get up. Also, a few of the remaining Heroes saw them running and took potshots at them. Arrows and spells soared close enough that Alder could hear their screams and whistles as they tore through the air. In front of him, a kaftar stumbled and fell, an arrow protruding from his neck. A couple drones disappeared when an ice bolt struck them, and the dish wobbled precariously as the remaining drones tried to gather their balance.

  Alder acted without thinking. He grabbed a corner of the tarp and steadied it. He ran along the drones, and ran, and ran, too tired and scared to even scream.

  And then the doors to the Charcoal Tower were almost upon them, charred, splintered, and barely holding on to their hinges. Alder wondered numbly what would’ve happened had the doors been barred from the inside, and then the rain stopped smacking against his head as he rushed inside.

  He stumbled and fell to his knees as soon as his nimble feet ended. Around him, everyone was steadying their breaths, even as they hurried away from the doors. The tower’s interior was so trashed that it was impossible to tell what it had been previous to the Heroes’ rampage inside. Akathunian bodies were strewn over broken furniture, bronze braziers lay on the cobblestone floor, hell chicken corpses, still smoking, fallen near the entrance, and a pair of naga spellcasters were nailed to the walls by ice bolts. All that could be broken was, and even a wall at the other end had collapsed to reveal the partially caved-in staircase to the upper floors.

  “Well done, Alder,” Lavy said, helping him up. She was panting and her cheeks were flushed red.

  Behind them, the kaftar hurried to close the doors as best as they could, as the drones carried the dish farther into the tower.

  “We need to hook the tower up to the dungeon’s ley lines,” Lavy told Kes. “Have half the drones start working on that and we’ll help the others carry the dish. Otherwise, we’ll waste too much time.”

  For a second, Kes didn’t give signs of having heard her. The Marshal was frowning, her gaze focused on the shadowy corners of the tower. Then she nodded. “Do as she says,” she told the drones.

  The drones shook their heads, something akin to impotence showing in their ugly faces.

  “That’s weird,” Lavy said. “They’ve never refused an order before.”

  Alder couldn’t help but shake the feeling that something was off. His eyes rested on the hell chicken bodies.

  It made no sense, he realized. The Heroes had ravaged the tower hours ago, then left. But the hell chickens had arrived with him and Lavy.

  Who had killed those?

  As realization struck him like thunder, and Kes’ eyes were already widening in alarm. “They aren’t refusing an order. The tower is contested!” the Marshal exclaimed. She raised her shield at the darkness just in time, because a flurry of arrows flew at them from the corners, whistling as they went. “AMBUSH!”

  Around Alder, kaftar fell and drones disappeared.

  Inquisitors poured from the shadows, weapons drawn, their silver armor turning gold as a Cleric cast his buffs on them.
<
br />   Lavy’s reaction saved Kes’ life.

  Arrows bounced off the avian’s shield, but the three Inquisitors were almost upon her, charging with shining white swords aimed her way. She knew she wouldn’t be able to fight them off, not with the amount of buffs they had up.

  Then all the specters flew past her without making a single sound, while Lavy spammed witch spray at the incoming Inquisitors, filling the air with colors. The white swords smote down the specters in seconds, and someone fired ice bolts straight at the Witch, but Kes stepped into the attack, deflecting the spells with her shield. Thanks to her improved shield master talent, the bolts broke against the shield instead of simply punching through.

  As she rushed into battle followed by the surviving Monster Hunters, she’d realized there were three Inquisitors leading the ambush, armed to the teeth, as well as a Cleric in heavy plate flanking the side and preparing a spell. Five Militant soldiers, less armored than the Inquisitors, followed a few steps behind, carrying spears, although some held spent runes in their free hands. Lastly, three Militant archers hurried to nock new arrows.

  She threw a stab at the Inquisitor that she guessed was the leader, a young man, powerfully built, who was barking orders even as he parried Kes’ strike:

  “Get the drones, Zeki! Archers, take out those casters!” With magically enhanced strength, he pushed Kes away with one mighty shove and his sword drew an arc aimed at her neck. She met it with her sword, and then stepped away from the Inquisitor’s real attack—a kick aimed straight at her gut, which missed by inches.

  The Monster Hunters reached the Marshal’s side just as the Inquisitor’s friends tried to get to her. Kaga threw a pair of throwing knives at the Cleric, but the man’s magical armor deflected them. Then Yumiya snared him in a hunting net and pulled him down, dodging arrows as she did so, moving with unnatural grace. Scimitars clashed against longswords, and steel struck plate, leather, and flesh. All around her, people screamed.