by Ramy Vance
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure everyone else is dead. So, doesn’t that mean that we should be looking for a new spot? Honestly, anything other than a freezer would be great.”
“But who’s going to check a freezer?” Dan asked. “Have you ever seen a horror movie where the bad guys find you in a freezer? No. Who would hide in a freezer? It’s freezing. You see my logic? If they didn't hide in it, they wouldn’t look in it.”
“I’m pretty sure the kids from Jurassic Park hid from the raptors in a freezer.”
“They hid in a kitchen. Also, raptors aren’t the same as orcs. Raptors are apex predators with the noses of bloodhounds. They were perfectly-evolved killers. We’re just hiding from orcs. Not exactly top of the food chain, you know.”
Martha considered. “Hm…guess you might be right.”
A voice right outside the kitchen broke their conversation. “Hey! Guys, I think I hear something in here!” an orc shouted as they opened the kitchen door. “I’m going to check it out!”
The orc stepped into the kitchen, a spear in one hand and an axe in the other. He looked at Martha and Dan and grinned widely. Murder was on his mind. The orc ran at Martha, swinging his sword. Martha ducked, neatly missing having her head taken off as Dan threw a punch at the orc. The orc smiled, unfazed.
He shoved Dan to the side and raised his spear in the other hand to impale Martha.
Martha grabbed Dan and used him as a human shield between the orc and her.
The spear went through Dan, who threw his arms up and screamed, “No! Not a grunt death!”
Martha winced as she tried to push Dan away and put some distance between her and the orc. “I’m so sorry, Dan,” she whimpered. “I totally thought you could take the orc. I’ll see you in another life, and I promise I’ll make up for getting you killed in such a shitty, predictable way, unbefitting such a great horror author.”
“The horror authors always get killed first. That’s why Stephen King never does any cameos,” Dan sputtered as dribbles of blood fell from his lips.
The orc raised an eyebrow at the two quipping authors. “How are you even still alive?” he asked before driving the spear even farther into Dan. The spear passed through Dan’s chest into Martha’s, who yelped as the spear pinned them together like some kind of human kabob.
As Martha and Dan slid down the spear, Martha wrung her hands. “How could this happen?” she asked. “I thought the universe loved me!”
Dan touched the shaft of the spear sticking out of his chest. “We should just die now. I feel like this is dragging on way too long. It’s gratuitous, and I’m saying that as someone who likes to write about organs getting ripped out by creepy things—”
“Will you two just shut up already?” the orc shouted, obviously frustrated by their prolonged death.
Dan looked at Martha over his shoulder. “Yeah, now’s a good time to die.”
Both authors sighed heavily, and their lives slipped away.
The orc towered over the bodies of the recently deceased authors. As the orc inspected his handiwork, Tao opened the door of the drawer he was hiding in a little bit wider. There was just enough room to squeeze out, and he was pretty sure he could sneak behind the orc and find another place to hide. For some reason, the orc seemed pretty interested in Dan’s corpse.
Tao managed to get out of the kitchen without alerting the orc. He swallowed all the breath he had been holding and took off down the hallway. He turned a corner, opened the first door he saw, and stepped into the room—still alive.
For now, at least.
Chapter Five
The writers were scouting around the cavern to see if they could find a way out. From the looks of it, they were trapped.
The only way out was the original tunnel they had come down, and no one wanted to try to figure out the different branching paths of the tunnels. They figured that by game logic, since there were enemies in this room, they couldn’t be too far off from the right direction. Even though they knew it wasn’t a video game, it still helped them to make sense of what was quickly becoming a miserable situation. Dawn was already starting to get grouchy from hunger. She wished her first quest in Middang3ard would have taken place after she had eaten, but she was determined not to be sullen.
Curiosity was what had gotten her into writing, and in the long run, this mess.
Hopefully, it would be curiosity that got her out of it.
Lindsay was admiring the albino spiders’ webs. They stretched over nearly the entirety of the cavern’s ceiling and looked to be sturdy. Other than the corpses dangling from one of the adjacent webs, it didn’t look as if the spiders had been hunting very much. Still, she knew the webs were of deadly design. That didn’t change how beautiful they were, though.
Dakota checked for chinks in the walls as he pressed his face to the rocks, hoping to catch a breeze. There was nothing, though, and he was trying not to get frustrated with his luck. Unlike Lindsay, he didn’t have a wealth of camping backstories to help him anchor himself. All he knew was breakneck-pace fantasy and science fiction. If this were a book he’d been writing, he would have preferred to skip over the part where the heroes got stuck in a cave for a few hours.
Still, this was part of the adventure, and even the greats like Tolkien still spent a little bit of time letting his heroes figure out how they were going to escape from the clutches of death.
Even if death was going to come from boredom.
Robyn didn’t seem to have a problem with waiting. It didn’t look like he was doing much to find a way out. He was sitting atop the largest boulder, his legs crossed and his hands resting lightly on his knees. His breathing was slow, and his eyes were closed in meditation. He hummed under his breath. This would have bothered other people, but the rest of the writers knew how important it was to keep your head. It was that calmness that got them through deadlines after weeks of writer’s block. Besides, having one person in the room who wasn’t freaking out was good for morale. And who could blame the guy for wanting to take a breather after fighting off a bunch of deadly arachnids?
Dawn finally got tired of walking around the cavern and acting like she knew what she was doing. She took a seat next to one of the spider’s corpses. Her eyes lingered on the exposed flesh behind its exoskeleton. It took her a few moments to realize she was drooling over the prospect of whatever meat was inside its crusty outer shell. Out of instinct, she opened her inventory to see if she had anything useful.
There was a campfire-and-cooking kit, which was exactly what she was looking for. Dawn selected it and the campfire conjured before her, complete with a pot already filled with boiling water, as well as a frying pan. The next thing Dawn did was grab the spider corpse next to her. She pulled it close and started cutting through the exoskeleton. The soft, almost spongy meat came apart with hardly any effort. She tossed it in the pan and listened to the meat sizzle over the open flames. It smelled heavenly. The smell was enough to attract the other writers to the fire.
Dakota peered over Dawn’s shoulder. “What you doing there, buddy?” he asked.
Dawn tore another piece of the spider off and tossed it in the pan as the rest of the writers scrunched their faces in disgust. “I’m fucking starving, so I’m making us some brain food,” Dawn said. “You guys interested?”
“Are you sure it’s edible?”
“Smells edible.”
The writers silently agreed to give it a try. They took seats near Dawn as she scrolled through her inventory and selected spices and herbs that were available from whatever the original owners of the HUDs had scavenged. She tossed what she could into the pan, and the cavern was filled with a great smell in a very short time.
Lindsay found that her HUD had a selection of plates and utensils, and she conjured those up and passed them around. Dawn spooned out food for everyone, and they sat there eating in silence for the first few minutes. No one was expecting the spider to taste so good. In fact, no one was expecting it to be t
he sweetest meat they had ever tried, yet it was. Dawn had never thought of herself as much of a cook, but she was rethinking that about halfway through her plate.
Dakota spooned another chunk of piping-hot spider into his mouth. “You know, I was thinking we should probably have a name since we’re kinda a party. I feel like every good party should have a pretty solid name. What are we going to shout when we go into battle? Or what if we want to get our faction emblazoned on our armor or something? We can’t do any of that without a name. Something intimidating yet elegant and impressive.”
Dawn burped loudly and continued to stir the pan of frying flesh. “How about ‘the Writers Unleashed?’” she asked, half-sarcastically.
“Ooooh, we could do a writer-themed one.”
Lindsay got more fried spider and leaned back against a rock. She was looking much less anxious than earlier. The food must have been good for her. Dawn knew it was working wonders for her own frustration. “How about ‘the Wordsmiths?’ Simple, but it gets the point across,” she suggested.
The writers looked at each other. There didn’t seem to be anything else to be said. The name just fit. There wasn’t anything over the top about it, but it also had a nice, heavy weight to it. Dawn nodded as she rolled the name around in her head a little bit longer. The Wordsmiths. Yeah, that sounded like something that would strike fear into your enemies if it was used in the right context. And if they didn’t take it seriously, the Wordsmiths would quickly remind any enemy of how serious they were.
After the Wordsmiths were finished gorging themselves on the flesh of their enemies, they returned to the search for a way out with renewed passion. If there were any ideas of what could be done, they were shouted across the cavern until someone was able to verify that it was worth trying or if they should keep looking for other options.
Honestly, nothing was really a good idea at the time. They were all just in better moods. That was until Lindsay finally stopped to take a drink of water from the lake. She looked down at the surface of the water for some time before she called the rest of the Wordsmiths over to her. “You know, this water looks like it’s pretty deep,” she said. “And I know a lot of arachnids can swim. That might have been how they got in here without us realizing it, and it might be our way of getting out here.”
Dakota looked warily at the water. He had never been a fan of swimming, and he dipped his finger into the cold water to remind himself why. “How do we know it goes anywhere?” Dakota asked.
Robyn looked around. “The karuikagis had to have come from somewhere. They didn’t come from above, so they must have come from below. But we can’t know for sure. That’s what makes this whole thing an adventure, right?”
“Yeah, I guess. If I drown down there, I’m going to come back and haunt the shit out of you.”
“Honey, if you drown, I’m probably going to be right there with you,” Lindsay sputtered.
“All right, well, let’s all get into the mysterious lake and hope it’s not filled with tons of tentacled creatures that try to drag us to our watery deaths.”
“I’m pretty sure when tentacle creatures are in the water, they’re called octopi or squids.”
Robyn sent his armor back into his inventory and climbed into the pool. His teeth chattered loudly as he tried to speak. “Actually, Cthulhu has a goodly number of tentacles, and technically, he lives in the sea. So—”
“Can we just get into the water?” Dawn asked.
Robyn pointed at his submerged lower half. “If you didn’t notice, I’m already halfway in. I’m waiting for you guys.”
The rest of the Wordsmiths stashed their armor in their inventories and returned to their civilian clothes, then slid into the water. It wasn’t freezing, but it wasn’t warm, either.
Dawn thanked God that it wasn’t warm. She didn’t want to feel like she was stepping into old bathwater. Colder was better than warmer. The writers looked at each other, took huge breaths, and dove into the lake.
The Wordsmith party members dove deeper into the lake. Under the water, it still looked like the cavern from above, but it was filled with much more greenery. Multicolored tendrils and leaves grew on the rocky walls. Dawn wished she could have stopped and looked at everything they swam past, like the turtles. Odd creatures scuttled across the walls, their eyes attached to huge stalks, their hands long and wavy. The floor was covered with what looked like hands reaching out to be grabbed.
Ahead of the rest, Lindsay stopped swimming, then pulled out her wand and pressed it to her lips. She motioned for the rest of the Wordsmiths to do the same. When Dawn touched her mouth to the wand, her lungs filled with air. Once they had all taken another gulp of air, the Wordsmiths continued swimming through the cavern. There was enough space for them to swim together easily, and it seemed as if the cavern had naturally eroded so that there was a clear path for them. It must have been the same path the karuikagis had followed. After some time, that path started to tilt upwards. They were heading toward the surface.
Lindsay burst out of the water and quickly pulled herself out of the lake, waving her wand at whatever might have jumped out at her. The rest of the Wordsmiths followed closely at her heels.
Eventually, the cavern closed into a smaller cave with a massive door at the far end.
This massive door, much like the first they had encountered when they had first been transported to the cavern, was covered in runes. Dawn looked closely at the door and ran her hands across the runes. “Guess this is door number two for the dungeon. You guys ready to do this?”
Dakota stepped to the door and pulled out his bow as his armor covered his body.
Lindsay raised her wand and sent a beam of light to float above their heads.
Robyn stepped forward, shield raised, his eyes determined and focused.
Dawn unsheathed her daggers and slipped into the shadows.
Now it was time to really start the dungeon crawl.
Chapter Six
The Wordsmiths stood in front of a large stone room.
The stone was very different from what they had seen in the caverns. This rock was white, almost like limestone, and glowed with an odd yellow-white light. The stones reminded Dawn of a childhood memory. Maybe six or seven years old, she had been out with her friends, and they had gone to a carnival. All night, they bounced between riding the rides, playing games, and eating carnival food. The last part of the night, they spent walking through a hall of mirrors, but the hall was nothing like she had ever seen before.
The mirrors extended for what seemed like an eternity.
There were very few lights in the hall, and the mirrors were covered in shadow, the little bit of light in the room giving the impression that there was an entirely different world behind each of the mirrors. That was where the light must have been coming from. When she’d talked to her parents, they had explained to her with the cool and calm logic that it seems like only adults know how to wield when you are a child that it was just an optical illusion.
There was no world behind the true world.
That was how Dawn felt right now, staring at the limestone-like walls and floor. Both walls and floors were laid with cut-stone bricks, each a twin of the one at its side. The room stretched similarly to how the hall of mirrors had compounded its space. Dawn wasn’t sure if she was looking at a never-ending room or if this was an optical illusion. In any case, it was making her dizzy. She looked at the rest of the Wordsmiths and saw that they also were slightly confused by what they were looking at.
Dakota looked around and then stuck his hand out in front of him. Not wishing to be too impetuous, he drew his longbow, nocked an arrow, and let it fly down the hall.
Everyone waited in tense silence, but the sound of the arrow hitting something never came. Dakota fired another arrow. Still, silence. “Well, I guess we can say that this is definitely a freakier room than the last one.” He sighed.
Lindsay smiled as she stepped into the room, her wand raised high, read
y for whatever could possibly pop out at her. “True, it does look freakier,” she agreed. “But, I mean, we’re on an adventure, right? It would be kinda boring if we weren’t challenged a little bit. What are you and Dawn always arguing about when it comes to a hero’s growth?”
Dawn hadn’t taken her eyes off of the floor stones.
They were not glowing.
She was certain of that.
There was some kind of energy coming off them, though. It wasn’t the same wavelength as light. She wasn’t certain how she knew this, but she was sure. “Wait, what?” she said as she realized Lindsay had spoken to her.
“That rant that you always go on about how to make a hero grow.”
Dawn sighed. “It’s not a rant, it’s just basic storytelling. Your hero has to go through some kind of trial. They have to suffer to some degree, physically or mentally. That’s how you can see them growing. Give them a situation that hints at some of their internal issues, then use the situation to tease out their heroic potential. Conflict 101. Any good TV show is capable of pulling it off.”
“So, this is our challenge. Freaky rooms. Maybe some monsters to fight. Doesn’t really feel like it’s touching on any of my emotional baggage, though. Does that mean I’m not the hero of the story?”
Lindsay shrugged. “I dunno. You’re the hero of your own story. Come on, we should get moving. Lit theory isn’t going to get us any closer to whatever the hell Craig sent us here to find. We should be careful, though. Something about this room feels very off to me. It just doesn’t feel right.”
Robyn crouched and looked at the stone bricks. “It’s because they’re off-center,” Robyn explained. “It’s an optical illusion. I once went to this house that everyone said was haunted. It was a tourist attraction. Once you got to the house, you went on a tour, and while you were walking around, you could feel how unnerving it was. But halfway through the tour, you come to this room. Just standing in the room made you want to throw up. It was off.
