by Zac Gorman
He sat down on a reasonably flat rock and began to feel sorry for himself.
None of this would’ve happened if it weren’t for Derrick, the blacksmith’s son. Ever since Derrick started paying attention to Becca, Gregory had had to work twice as hard to win her favor. Derrick was broad shouldered and had hands like slabs of meat covered in sandpaper—which was a thing Gregory had learned that girls apparently liked for some reason. His own hands were soft, with oddly long fingers, but since being in the dungeon he had developed a blister from squeezing his sword so tightly. Maybe that was worth a peck on the cheek?
Gregory took out the bag of “wyvern beads” and examined them like he’d seen the appraisers do at the town market. He had no idea what he was looking for, but he screwed up his face like they did and nodded to himself, and eventually decided they were indeed genuine and quite valuable. When Becca saw these, she’d undoubtedly agree to marry him and forget all about Derrick and his viable career, natural good looks, and casual charm.
An awful guttural noise from nearby made Gregory jump. He hastily tucked his bag of treasure back into his belt and scurried ahead to see whatever it was that he should probably be running away from.
Gregory emerged from a twisty corridor to find himself standing on the edge of an enormous cavern shaped like a giant stone bowl. At the bottom of the bowl was a sort of odd drain. With a shrug of his gangly shoulders, Gregory proceeded to make his way toward the drain as if he were approaching the door of a tavern or a particularly friendly looking tree—that is to say, he simply walked toward it.
There was a horrible yowling from the dark.
Gregory hesitated and wondered if he should head back. If it were really dangerous, though, he figured somebody probably would’ve posted a sign, something like “Keep Out” or “Danger,” that sort of thing. There was almost always a sign. He looked around. No sign.
He plodded onward.
It was hard work traveling down the slippery rocks, and by the time he reached the bottom, Gregory was ready for a break. He sat down on a boulder and stared out over the strange drain in the middle of the floor, pondering its existence. It seemed like this whole room could be a sort of bathtub for a giant, but he wasn’t sure a giant could get very clean in here, on account of all the dirt. Also, where was the faucet?
As he pondered, a black cat the size of a small building staggered out of the dark. It appeared to be injured, or at least extremely tired, and it slumped down near the drain in exhaustion, breathing heavily. Gregory thought he saw blood matting its fur. It could have been tomato sauce, though. It was hard to tell. He wondered if he should say something. It seemed rude to just sit there.
Several small glowing doorways appeared on the floor near the cat, and from them emerged the most horrible creatures Gregory had ever seen. They looked accidental in their design, like children’s drawings come to life. All their parts were jumbled together, arms growing out of heads, faces in stomachs, too many legs, wings and horns and tails all mixed up in a way that seemed to suggest they were created as some sort of cruel joke.
Strangely enough, a man appeared to be leading these monsters. He was squat and hairy and had a vicious grin across his smug face. Gregory thought that on his own, the man was ugly enough that if he were to fall asleep on a balcony he might be mistaken for a gargoyle, and yet, compared to the creatures he was leading, he seemed quite ordinary. He waved his arms, and the monsters charged forward.
Gregory hid. It was the first smart decision he’d made since walking into the dungeon two days ago.
The monsters pounced on the wounded cat. The cat fought back with the last of his strength but was inevitably overwhelmed. They tied him down with ropes and laughed at him as they did. In unison, several of the monsters each threw something small at the ground, aiming for the same spot, and a larger glowing doorway opened. At the hairy man’s command, they dragged the monstrous cat into the doorway and then jumped in behind him. The doorway closed with a crackling pop of magical energy, which sparked and momentarily lit up the entire cavern with rainbow light.
Gregory stood up and scratched his head.
He wandered over to where the commotion had been just moments before and touched the ground lightly. There was no sign of where the glowing doors had just been.
On the ground next to him he noticed a bag that one of the creatures must’ve dropped. Inside there were several small black beads, which he added to his sack of wyvern beads. Hopefully these would be worth something, too, although honestly, they didn’t look like much. Just boring old black beads. He looked around contemplatively.
Maybe the faucet is hidden, he thought.
Chapter 11
“We’ve been walking for hours,” said Iphigenia, an hour and a half later.
“We can rest, if you’d like,” said Thisby.
Iphigenia looked around and tried to imagine herself sitting down here to rest. To her right was a fountain that hadn’t seen a drop of water in possibly hundreds of years. It was so covered in moss and lichens that it was hard to tell what the sculpture standing in the middle was supposed to be. To her left was an enormous set of heavy oak double doors banded with rusted iron. The doors were propped open just enough that she could squeeze through if she so desired, or more likely, something inside could squeeze out. In front of them were more hallways, tunnels, stairways, and passages. And behind them were yet more hallways, tunnels, stairways, and passages.
Everything Iphigenia had seen in the dungeon so far looked about as bleak as she felt. Hallway after hallway of boring gray stones that appeared as if they’d never been cleaned, random vines and gross moss, and rusted iron bars. Occasionally there’d be a natural cave path riddled with stalagmites, which was sort of pretty in its own way, but that was about it. There was also the smell, the constant, lingering smell, which never went away and which reminded Iphigenia of wet dirt mixed with boiled cabbage.
Iphigenia shook her head, and they continued on.
Thisby had a notebook open as they went and seemed to be spending more time looking at it than she did at the path ahead. It had quickly become a favorite game of Iphigenia’s to watch the girl as she approached an obstacle with her nose buried in her books, and delight with anticipation at the impending collision. Yet somehow, every time, at the last second Thisby always managed to duck or dodge out of the way, narrowly averting disaster. It was very disappointing.
“What are you looking at?” asked Iphigenia.
Thisby raised her nose from her notebook. “Hm?”
She looked rather like a mouse, Iphigenia thought. Big, wet, curious eyes, a pointed nose; she even had fairly prominent front teeth.
“What. Are. You. Looking. At,” she repeated.
“Maps,” said Thisby casually, returning to her notes. “The tunnels got a little messed up around here after what the tarasque did. I’m trying to find a safe way back.”
Iphigenia peered over Thisby’s shoulder to get a look at her maps. She figured that it was likely that between the two of them, she was the only one who’d ever formally studied cartography—under one of the greatest mapmakers in all of Nth, no less—so she reasoned that she should probably be the one to read the maps. What Iphigenia saw, however, was a tangle of lines, all different colors and all coded with strange symbols that might as well have been an astrological projection as a physical place. It was nothing like the ornate, multicolored scrolls printed on vellum with which Iphigenia was familiar. The compass rose in the corner didn’t even show the proper cardinal directions. Where most maps had N, S, E, and W, Thisby’s had U, O, D, and I.
“What does this mean?” asked Iphigenia.
“Oh! That stands for Up, Out, Down, and In,” said Thisby proudly. “It’s my own system for navigating the mountain. Pretty handy, huh?”
“What about that way?” asked Iphigenia, pointing at what appeared to be a fairly direct route toward the castle. The slime dangling in a jar over Thisby’s shoulder snorted, earnin
g him a dirty look from the Princess.
“Well,” said Thisby, clearly amused herself, “I mean, for one thing, that’s going to take us right through the manticore’s lair, and then there’s the—”
“Is it faster?” Iphigenia demanded.
“I guess,” said Thisby, “but not if we die.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
Iphigenia had a look about her now that made Thisby realize it’d be best to tread lightly. Thisby tried to think of a better way to explain the situation to the Princess, but nothing was coming to mind. Something about the Princess and her backward logic made Thisby’s brain go fuzzy. It was an effect that the Larkspurs often had on common people. It was as if their mere essence implied that they were always correct even when they clearly weren’t.
“I guess we could go that way . . . ,” Thisby muttered at last.
“Perfect!” said Iphigenia.
“Thisby!” scolded Mingus once the Princess was out of earshot. “What are you thinking? It’s too dangerous!”
Thisby’s face reddened.
“Yeah! But! Well . . . ,” she trailed off. “Anyway, it will save time!”
“You don’t have to listen to her just because she’s the Princess! You’re the expert down here, not her!”
“I know! I know! Don’t worry! It’ll be fine! If the manticore rips us in half, you could always use your mysterious slime healing powers to piece us back together!” teased Thisby.
“Thisby! This is serious!”
“Don’t worry! I’ve got it under control,” said Thisby, and then decided to add the only two words that immediately cause the listener to lose all confidence in the speaker: “. . . trust me.”
Once they passed the second gate at the top of the long stone stairway, Thisby knew it was too late to turn back. If the manticore was around, they were in trouble. If it wasn’t, they’d cut about half a day’s travel time off their trip. On the way down to the lair, Thisby triple-checked her notes as if something definitive might surface, but the manticore was too mercurial to keep a regular schedule and too irritable to forgive them for trespassing. She knew it was a coin toss. Heads or tails if they’d make it out alive.
Thisby didn’t like being so reckless, but the Larkspurs had a knack for getting their way. In fact, as the story goes, it’s how the Larkspurs ascended to the throne in the first place. Most royal families throughout the bloody history of Nth had seized their kingdoms by brute force, but not the Larkspurs. Apparently, they’d simply asked the right people for the right favors at the right times, and those people had said yes.
In this way, Iphigenia wasn’t much like her family at all.
For a Larkspur, Iphigenia had a tendency to rub people the wrong way. Not like her brother, Ingo. Ingo was a born charmer, the epitome of Larkspur heritage. Iphigenia was often too brutally honest for her own good. They say a dishonest man wants dishonest answers to dishonest questions, and nowhere was that more true than in the royal court of Nth.
Thisby had her doubts about their decision to take the shortcut, but it was too late. She’d said yes. Upon entering the chamber and discovering that the entire floor was made of bones, Iphigenia was beginning to have her doubts as well.
“Don’t worry,” whispered Thisby, stepping carefully through the remains. “They’re mostly not human.”
Mingus suspected differently but figured he could correct her later, if they didn’t end up somewhere in the piles themselves.
The girls clambered across the piles of bones, trying their best to be sneaky and failing miserably. Mandibles knocked into femurs, tibias bumped into rib cages, and metatarsals collided with patellas, creating a dry, rattling cacophony with every step. The piles peaked in little teepees of death scattered throughout the room, and the girls wove between them, guided by Mingus’s light.
Thisby pulled ahead, leading the way as Iphigenia struggled to keep up. Her long dress was better suited for elegant brunches at the royal palace than it was for climbing across piles of skulls. Conversely, Thisby’s outfit, though it wasn’t much to look at, functioned quite well in this scenario.
“I don’t think he’s in here,” whispered Thisby. “I guess, you made the right call, uh . . . Your Highness?” Thisby spun around.
But the Princess had stopped dead in her tracks. Out of the corner of her eye, amid the piles of bones, Iphigenia saw it. Her family sigil. Her brother’s brooch.
Her heart raced as she bent down to pick it up. She couldn’t help but picture it being ripped from Ingo’s cloak as he was devoured by the horrible beast that lurked down here in the dark.
She looked it over. It was a man’s brooch, to be certain, and one that bore her family’s sigil as clear as day, but it was hundreds of years old by even the most conservative estimate. Far too old to have belonged to her brother. Iphigenia let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Apparently, some relative of hers had long ago tried his luck at the dungeon, and this was as far as he’d made it. She wondered what he could’ve been looking for down in this terrible place. The Larkspurs had always had wealth to spare, so mere treasure couldn’t have been too much of a draw for one. Perhaps he’d just craved adventure.
Iphigenia sighed again. This time out of contempt rather than relief. People and their adventure. She never could figure it out. It was as if life somehow bored them, and yet so often the people who craved adventure the most had barely tried their hand at real life to begin with. She had no patience for it.
She tossed the brooch back atop the pile of bones where it belonged. But before Iphigenia could even wipe the knowing grin off her face, the entire pile collapsed, burying her underneath.
The percussive rumble of the tumbling bones echoed off the walls of the cavern and reverberated directly into the pit of Thisby’s stomach, where it rattled around as a sense of all-consuming dread.
“Mingus! Stop glowing!” she said as she scrambled to conceal herself behind an uncollapsed stack of bones. Mingus’s light shrank in an instant until he was just a quivering mass of gray jelly, looking up at her, his mouth agape with shock.
“Thisby! What was that?” he asked.
“Shhh!” she scolded.
Thisby hid with her backpack pressed against the pile, waiting and listening. It was dark in the cavern without Mingus’s light, but the last thing she wanted to do right now was draw more attention to herself. Thisby blinked hard, squeezing her eyes shut until she saw little purple spots and then repeated the process, desperate for her eyes to adjust to the darkness and somehow convinced this would help.
“Thisby! Thisby!” came a frantic voice.
Thisby could still barely see but she had an idea of the general direction.
“I’m trapped! Get me out of here—now!” yelled Iphigenia.
In the distance, beneath the collapsed pile, Thisby saw a pale white hand waving frantically in her direction. Iphigenia’s hand appeared to be the only part of her that was free, and she was using it for all it was worth.
As her eyes adjusted more, Thisby made out Iphigenia’s panicked face, peering out from beneath a ribcage.
“THIZBEEEE! THIZBEEEE!” she screamed.
“SHUT UP!” yelled Thisby.
For once the Princess listened. Or at least she fell quiet because she’d heard it, too. They weren’t alone in the cave. Thisby heard a snuffling noise from somewhere off in the distance, and her heart sank to the very bottom of her boots.
Chapter 12
Thisby waited and listened. The manticore paced around the cave, sniffing the air in big, heavy slurps like it was trying to get every last drop of a milk shake through a narrow straw.
On her way to the cave she’d been brushing up on her notes concerning manticores and had been reminded about their keen sense of smell. It was probably only a matter of time before it found them. Thisby, for the most part, smelled like the dungeon and would be harder to detect, but Iphigenia’s flowery soaps would be a dead giveaway. Emphasis on t
he word dead.
Thisby considered her options. There weren’t as many as she would’ve liked. She could hear the beast’s footsteps crunching over the carpet of bones. It was getting closer. Carefully, she peeked out to see exactly how close.
The manticore emerged from behind a tall pile. It stood at least eight feet high to the shoulder. Its face was almost human, but its body was entirely animal—like that of a lion, but with hideous leathery wings sprouting from its back. The wings seemed too small to lift the creature’s bulky frame, and from what Thisby could recall from her notes, that much was true. Behind the beast trailed its most dangerous weapon: its tail. Long and scaly, the manticore’s tail was capable of shooting poisonous arrowlike barbs. The poison in the barbs wasn’t usually lethal—it was far more malicious than that: its intent wasn’t to kill its prey immediately but to slow it down so that they were still alive, still fresh, when the manticore finally caught up.
Thisby watched until the manticore disappeared behind another stack of bones, and then she bent down to pick up a skull. With all her might, she heaved it as far away from her as possible, in the opposite direction of Iphigenia. The skull clattered noisily across a bed of its fallen compatriots.
Like clockwork, the manticore charged toward the noise, assuming his prey had slipped. Thisby used this momentary distraction to dash over to Iphigenia. She sprinted as fast as she could and grabbed Iphigenia by her one free hand, roughly yanking her out from beneath the pile of bones in one swift motion. The pile, of course, collapsed behind her.
Thisby knew they’d have only seconds now. The manticore reeled around at the sound of their escape and, realizing he’d been tricked, came charging back in their direction at full tilt. It was as much of a head start as the girls were going to get.
Its face was almost human, but its body was entirely animal—like that of a lion, but with hideous, leathery wings sprouting from its back.
