Rogue Dungeon

by James A. Hunter

  The clash of metal on metal filled the graveyard. At the far corner, two humans in shining plate armor and one in deep purple robes were attacking the undead with greatswords and showers of lightning. The angry groans of Shambling Revenants mingled with the excited whoops of the fighters, but the rest of the Revenants continued their pointless circuits of the graveyard as if nothing were happening.

  Roark had barely enough time to wonder why the Revenants weren’t simply overwhelming the humans with their superior numbers when a smoky shadow moved near the broken graveyard gate.

  An arrow whistled out of the patch of darkness and slammed into his chest.

  [x2 Stealth Multiplier]

  Pain throbbed outward from the shaft of the arrow, and the filigreed vial at Roark’s right flashed twice as the remaining red liquid drained out. He felt his body topple backward off the wall, arms and legs flopping and flailing with an unlikely disregard for basic physics. The mysteries of this new world faded to nothingness along with everything he could see, and Roark von Graf died.

  FIVE:

  Hearth of the World

  Music swelled inside Roark’s head, a deep, driving song of warfare. The endless black void of death receded, shedding light on two winged figures: One with midnight skin and leathery wings wielding a glowing purple scythe with a blade longer than its wingspan. The other with fiery golden flesh and wings radiating white light, brandishing a flaming longsword twice its height. The creatures whirled and slashed and danced across the sky, locked in an endless battle above the magma-filled cone of a massive volcano.

  “Long ago,” a deep, rasping voice began, “the war between the infernali and the malaika destroyed our world.”

  Slowly the pair of creatures grew smaller, and Roark realized with a start that he was moving away from their combat-dance, gaining a wider vantage point. He was flying, though he had no proper body. The land stretched out below the volcano was crisscrossed with streams of lava and filled with hundreds of thousands of the winged creatures, both light and dark—some wielding glowing or flaming weapons, others throwing elemental attacks, and still others leading charges with armies of strange chimeras. The noise and chaos of large-scale battle rang in his ears. The smell of fire and slag and death burned in his nostrils.

  Then it all faded away.

  “While the younger races—humans, elves, and rogs—chose their sides …”

  Light exploded, shining down on a human in obsidian plate armor and a taller, willowier humanoid creature with azure skin and pointed ears. The Lyuko travelers had stories of elves—pointy-eared, fair-haired children of the forest—and the azure-skinned creature certainly fit the bill. The pair of them knelt before one of the winged demons. Without warning, the vision receded and vanished, giving way to an identical scene of a female elf and a muscular green-skinned humanoid with intricately carved tusks and gleaming, boxy armor—the rog?—kneeling in the brilliant glare of a winged angel.

  “… and accepted their divine and infernal magics …”

  By some enchantment, Roark saw the two scenes playing out at the same time now, side by side. As one, the demon and angel reached down, touching the beings pledging their service. Bright white light and deepest shadow flared and consumed the images.

  “... we olms hid away in our mountains,” the rasping voice said, “trusting our intellect and cleverness to protect us while we waited for the war to end and peace to fall once again.”

  Roark watched as a group of what looked like upright aquatic salamanders filed into the darkness of a mountain cave, paddlelike tails hanging from the bottom of their flowing robes. Only one stopped and turned his round slime-coated head back to look over his shoulder at the surface world he was leaving behind. This salamander-man closed his blue eyes sadly and followed his kin into the depths of the earth.

  Then Roark was deep in the darkness of a cave where the salamander-people—olms, he reminded himself—stood around a glowing green table with arcane symbols etched into its granite surface. They wore ornate circlets fitted with gemstones, leaned on elaborately carved staves, and held thin pen-like sticks in hand. These sticks they waved over flasks that flashed bright pink, toxic yellow, or intense blue.

  “But in the end, the Hearth tired of waiting for their arrogance and stupidity to cleanse them from her world …”

  The battle at the volcano returned, though this time the humans, elves, and rogs had joined the fight. As the infernali and malaika hacked and slashed their way across the sky, the landbound armies cut one another down and incinerated each other on the lava-crossed field of combat below.

  Suddenly, a deep thundering reverberated across the battlefield, and the armies on the ground were shaken from their feet. Smoke billowed from the volcano’s cone, quickly followed by chunks of porous rock and gouts of lava. The burning slag pummeled the winged infernali and malaika like a sentient rain, glomming onto their flesh and burning them out of the sky.

  “However, she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—cleanse the scars their fighting left behind.”

  Roark found himself looking out across the wreckage of a once-handsome citadel much like the one he’d just died in, but fresh, with the ruined bodies of combatants strewn across the rubble.

  “Nor would she banish the misbegotten creatures the infernali and malaika created in their pursuit of victory and domination. Some say she left them as a reminder of the price of arrogance …”

  An enormous golden boar the size of a house, with golden tusks, barreled through a village, smashing homes and businesses while townspeople ran screaming from the destruction. All around, blue-skinned Changelings pillaged dwellings and ripped into panicking cattle with their black claws and serrated teeth.

  “Now, revered heroes among the younger races fight the unnatural abominations the great war left behind.”

  A party of warriors stood on a wide plain. An azure-skinned elf in shining plate mail, a coppery-haired woman in a dark hood and black leathers, and a pale-skinned elf in purple robes looked on while one of the green-skinned rogs inspected a heavy set of tracks in the grass. The rog’s topknot shifted in the breeze as he stood and pointed at the columned ruins of a temple ahead.

  Some great predator roared, and the scene shifted to an underground lair, where the same party attacked a huge leathery creature with gray skin and stringy white hair. It hurled blasts of infernal energy at them while cutting and hewing with the same glowing, long-bladed scythe the winged infernali had wielded in the war.

  The rog and the dark elf in the shining plate mail ran in, one from each side, swinging a thin, elegant blade and a thick, cleaving longsword, respectively. Each time the warriors sustained an injury, the purple-robed elf waved her hands in an arcane pattern—another form of the mysterious air-writing? Roark wondered—and a bloody purple nimbus would surround them, healing their gashes. The black-clad human disappeared from the fray in a puff of shadow, only to reappear at the creature’s back.

  The smoky shadow curling off the human’s form brought to Roark’s mind the patch of darkness which had shot him from the citadel wall. Devious. He couldn’t fault the assassin’s method—it aligned well with his personal policy of stealthy victory over forthright defeat—but he did long to appear behind her and sink his Lyuko dagger into her kidneys.

  In a flash of rapier and dagger, the assassin scored the monster’s hide, then disappeared again. The behemoth roared, sweeping the scythe toward where she had been—but far too late. The rog adopted a martial pose, slim blade pointed at the colossal beast, then cried out, “Stance of the Cleansing Lotus Flame!” The rog lunged, and its blade slashed through the behemoth’s abdomen, orange flames eating away at the creature’s flesh from the wound. With a sssshinggg, the dark elf’s longsword sliced through the behemoth’s thick neck, and its head thudded to the stone floor, rolling away.

  “And, as always, to the victor go the spoils,” the rasping voice said.

  Behemoth dead, the party of warriors sorted through
the gold, jewels, and weaponry piled around the underground lair. But when they came to the creature’s infernal scythe, the assassin, dark elf, and rog all turned to the fair elf in the purple robes. One pale hand reached out and grasped its thorny, obsidian handle. Arcs of infernal energy crackled through the air. The elf’s white hair billowed around her like a corona and her eyes flashed deepest amethyst.

  “While the young, childish races seek glory, fame, and power in the extermination of these infernal and divine miscreations, we step out of our caves once more.”

  Back at the mountains, an army of olms filed out of the caves, squinting against the setting sun. This time, however, the salamander-people were clad in jangling silver mail set with gemstones. Glinting silver swords hung from their belts, and they carried staves and those slim magical sticks. Roark itched to get his hands on one and study how their magick worked.

  “We will bring the chaos under reign once more …”

  The image shifted to squads of the olms subduing unruly humans and elves and leading a top-knotted rog to a headman, ax raised and ready. Next, a small envoy of them stood before a king. No words were uttered, but the sovereign slowly left his throne and knelt before the strange lizard folk.

  “… and return order to Hearthworld by any means necessary.”

  The leader of the olm envoy looked directly into Roark’s eyes, and he realized this was the same salamander who had looked back sadly on the warring world as he left it behind. The salamander’s faded blue eyes flared suddenly with aquamarine light.

  “Will you be with us … or against us?”

  Blackness faded in until all Roark could see was the glowing blue eyes, then they faded as well.

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  Roark flinched away instinctively, expecting a magical attack. Then realizing he had no body in this void, he relaxed and studied the letters more closely. The first line of text disappeared, replaced by a second:

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  A single, eerie note drifted through the blackness like a feather on the wind, deftly turning into a haunting melody, accompanied by the scent of smoke and molten earth.

  HEARTHWORLD

  While his mind was still struggling to discern the intentions of these spells, Roark abruptly found himself wandering bodiless through a bustling marketplace. The streets were filled with vendors under colorful canopies, their wooden stalls showcasing weapons, armor, jewelry, gemstones, food, and drinks. Warriors, assassins, sorcerers, and soldiers of every shape, size, and color combination wandered through the market wearing a mishmash of armor, robes, and helms of varied quality. Rather than attacking one another or the olms walking among them, the people chatted amiably, negotiated with the vendors, and even bartered with one another for more powerful items or items that more closely matched the ones they already wore.

  They all seemed sentient and were clearly capable of speech. Interesting.

  Fearing that he already knew what the outcome would be, Roark tried to speak, to get the attention of any of these people so that he could demand the answers that the feather-banded Changeling hadn’t been bright enough to supply. But of course, without a body to form the words, the effort was fruitless.

  The golden text returned, stretching through the air of the market while warriors, sorcerers, and assassins walked beneath, seemingly unaware.

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  As Roark struggled to understand the foreign meanings of so many words he’d once wielded with ease, a strange feeling of dissolving overtook him. Similar to when he’d leapt into the portal, but with nowhere near the amount of pain. The writing and market vanished around him, leaving nothing but blackness behind.

  And from the blackness came one bloodred word: Respawning …

  SIX:

  Mystic Grimoire

  When Roark opened his eyes again, he was standing knee-deep in black ground fog, facing the ruins of the ancient citadel. He felt a brief moment of relief at having returned to a corporeal body, but that bubble popped when he realized it was the ungainly, disproportionate Changeling’s body rather than his own. Blue leathery skin, knobby knees, spidery limbs, and claw-tipped fingers.

  Around his waist, the dirty loincloth waved softly along with the swirls and eddies of the fog. Having seen the other inhabitants of this plane decked out in armor and armed to the teeth, Roark would’ve given quite a lot for some sort of combat gear of his own. At least the pendant he’d stolen from the Tyrant King was still firmly in place around his neck.

  Roark turned in a slow circle, searching the derelict courtyard for any sign of sentient life. There in the shadows of the crumbling staircase, the feather-banded Changeling stood swaying and bobbing like a ship on the Great Sea. At regular intervals, the creature grunted to no one and pointed into the wisps of black fog.

  Roark frowned. That hardly counted as sentient.

  He dismissed the swaying Changeling from his mind and stole over to the pile of rubble that connected to the gap in the citadel’s wall. A few awkward moments of scrambling later, he heaved his potbelly over the side and dropped to the ground in the graveyard once more.

  Rather than the catlike landing he had envisioned, something went wrong, and he landed in a tangle of disproportionate arms and legs. Roark croaked indignantly and picked himself up. This body was taking a lot of getting used to for what, so far, felt like an exceedingly small reward. If he hadn’t already realized that this was an entirely different world from his own, he would have wondered whether Marek had somehow imprisoned his mind in this clumsy body as a form of torture.

  All around the tombstones and crypts, desiccated corpses tagged [Shambling Revenants] shuffled and groaned. They walked constantly, yet seemed to have no particular destination in mind. They shuffled a few steps in one direction, then turned around and retraced their paths back to where they’d begun.

  It didn’t bode well for finding an intelligent source to speak to.

  Still, after a few minutes’ observation, he noted one Shambling Revenant that followed a slightly wider variety of patterns through the graves and crypts. Three, to be exact: First, around a cracked crypt to the far gate and back. Then to a dead tree near a wrought iron fence and back once more. And finally, a shuffling beeline toward the gaping door of a mausoleum. This Revenant had a cracked blackwood bow slung over his shoulder, a quiver full of black-fletched arrows, and the tattered remains of a very scraggly beard on what was left of his jaw.

  He scanned the graveyard for any bands of “heroes” like the ones who had shot him down earlier. None in sight.

  Roark trotted over to the bearded Revenant, trying to imbue the tiny Changeling body he was stuck in with some amount of his accustomed agility and at least a pinch of dignity. The effect was something like a two-legged gallop, though the pace was hardly fast enough to do the word justice.

  The bearded Revenant had just begun its circuit of the dead tree when Roark caught up to it. He fell into step with its shuffling gait and attempted to get its attention.

  “Can you understand me?” he croaked up at it.

  The Shambling Revenant opened its mouth, waggling the strings of beard attached to what was left of its decaying throat as it prepared to speak.

  Roark’s heart fluttered with excitement inside his bony bird-chest.

  And then sank as the bearded Revenant let out a long, meaningless groan identical to the groans of the rest of the Revenants lumbering around the graveyard. The rotting creature continued its shuffle toward the dead tree. Worthless creature.

  Roark sighed and left off following the creature.

  “Can anything in th
is world understand me?” he muttered to no one. At least it was becoming more intuitive to speak. He was going to need a way to amuse himself as he slowly went insane surrounded by useless creatures with no concept of communication.

  In a way, this wasn’t so different from the last twenty years of his life. When he wanted answers, he’d had to search them out alone. When he wanted to do something, he’d had to teach himself how. In all the meaningful ways, this was that. He had to figure out what in the hells this world was and find a way back to Korvo. And he would do it the way he always had—on his own. He had made a promise to the Tyrant King that he meant to fulfill.

  If the creatures here couldn’t carry on an intelligent conversation, perhaps he could find his answers through other means. A world with tombstones was a world where at least some form of marking the dead took place, even if it didn’t stick, as evidenced by the Shambling Revenants walking the graveyard. Perhaps he could find a grave marker whose symbols or letters could still be read. That would be a start, in any case.

  Roark crept through the dewy grass and began searching the closest tombstones for legible markings. Their pale surfaces were weather-pitted and rough, overgrown with lichen, and many were cracked in half, obviously carved from stone too soft to stand the centuries. Though the moon above was shrouded in a film of oily black cloud, Roark found his bulging Changeling eyes had no problem seeing clearly. Each tiny flat finger of lichen stood out in perfect contrast to the eroded stone from which it grew, but he couldn’t find any discernable pattern on the grave markers. To be certain he hadn’t missed anything, he ran his leathery blue fingers over the rough, pebbled surfaces, but couldn’t detect any design or writing carved into them.

  He had nearly reached the end of one haphazard row when he spotted a dull gleam in the tall grass beside a crumbling mausoleum. He waited impatiently as a female Revenant shambled past—she wore scanty, tattered armor that protected precious little—then loped over to inspect the source of the gleam.