Rogue Dungeon

by James A. Hunter

  Roark lifted his gaze to the darkness of Zyra’s hood. Was it his imagination that he saw a flash of eyes in the shadows?

  “Maybe they’ll see it as weakness and come back later to kill me,” he said, then shrugged. It is what it is. “Or maybe they’ll remember that I spared them, and when someone else sends them to do the job, they’ll spare me in turn. I’d rather give them the chance to do the right thing than take away any possibility of a choice just in case.”

  Her bodice moved in captivating ways when she sighed. “I can’t tell whether you’re insane or brilliant,” she said, shaking her hood.

  Roark grinned. “I’m not sure myself most of the time, but I like to hope it’s the latter.”

  Overhead, Macaroni woke suddenly, a low growl building in his throat. Roark drew his rapier. Beside him, Zyra held a trio of poisoned blades between her fingers.

  Moments later, a level-two Changeling sprinted into the library—eyes wild, chest heaving—narrowly averting a collision with a stack of books perched precariously on a nearby table.

  “Heroes, Overseer,” he wheezed, doubling over to place his spidery hands on knobby knees. “In the bailey. So many heroes. Including the one you instructed us to watch for—PwnrBwner_007.”

  A raid in the early hours of the morning, when any army’s defenses would be the weakest. Once again Roark cursed PwnrBwner_007 for not being a halfwit as he shot past the Changeling guard and took off down the hall.

  The throne room was empty, the troops deployed throughout the floor rather than clustering the manpower in one place. Roark vaulted up onto the dais and would’ve landed in the twisted obsidian throne if not for a sudden puff of black smoke and a midnight blue shoulder knocking him aside. Roark stumbled, arms pinwheeling, and his Dexterity points were the only thing that saved him from breaking his neck in an undignified fall. He regained his balance and rounded on Zyra, bewildered and more than a little annoyed.

  “Look,” Zyra hissed, sweeping a hand toward the throne as she scanned the corners and shadows of the throne room. “It’s a potent contact poison. If you touch it, you’ll be killed. It’s expensive. Rare.”

  Roark nodded his understanding as he padded forward, stopping on the dais just before the throne itself. He hunched forward a bit, eyes squinted, leathery brow furrowed. A closer inspection revealed a variegated sheen of oil, nearly invisible to the naked eye. He would be better prepared in the future now that he knew what to look for, but if not for Zyra he almost certainly would have perished. All of his progress gone in one fell swoop. “A welcoming gift from Azibek?” Roark guessed, lifting his rapier to the guard position and waiting for the attack he was sure would follow.

  The hooded Reaver nodded and sniffed the air.

  “An assassin who thinks they’re very clever,” she said. “But they triggered the trap I put in the staircase. Dropped rotting heads right down on top of them. Covered themselves in rancid stink.”

  She crouched and took a step deeper into the shadows, disappearing in a curl of black smoke.

  Metal thudded into wood on Roark’s right. He spun to find Zyra flicking poisoned knives at a gangly Reaver with a wooden buckler painted with a crude skull and crossbones. The two assassins danced and flickered in and out of shadow and smoke, hurling throwing knives and iron darts at one another. Flicker, gone. Flash, they appeared once more, Zyra knocking aside an incoming blade with her forearm, then spinning low and left, shooting inside the assassin’s guard, lashing out with a poison-tipped dagger. The hooded rogue was fast, though, blindingly so, and knocked the incoming thrust away with the flat of a short-bladed dagger.

  Flicker, gone again.

  From the corridor, Roark heard distant shouting and the clash of metal on metal. PwnrBwner_007’s party had made it into the citadel. Already the screams of the dying were echoing through the halls.

  Roark cursed under his breath. He had faith in his troops. They had the weapons and armor they needed to resist the incursion, and so long as they stuck to their training, they stood a real chance of surviving. But they needed a general. They needed guidance. But he couldn’t give them that guidance without accessing the damned Overseer’s grimoire, and he couldn’t access the grimoire because the bloody throne was poisoned! The Dungeon Lord’s timing was both impeccable and dastardly.

  Roark crossed the room in furious strides, Azibek’s lackey in his sights. Zyra feinted right, then dove into a sharp roll, coming up behind the enemy Reaver. Her open hand shot forward like an arrow, smashing down onto the assassin’s shoulder; the assassin’s red bar flashed green the moment she connected. Poisoned. Health drained away. Roark closed with his opponent, rapier whispering through the shadow, opening a series of short but deep cuts across the sneaky bastard’s upper arm. Muscle severed, the arm fell limp. The poisoned darts he’d been clutching in his hand fell to the floor.

  Desperate, the assassin wheeled about, bashing at Zyra with his stout buckler. She moved like water, gracefully flowing out of the way as she countered. Her leather-wrapped palm slashed toward the assassin’s face, but he disappeared in a puff of inky black. Gone like a bad dream. Roark and Zyra circled warily, ready to attack at the slightest hint of movement.

  The assassin appeared behind Zyra, an ebony blade out and ready to launch a crippling blow. Perhaps even a mortal one. Unfortunately for the assassin, he was inside Roark’s range. Roark lunged then thrust, stoccata di quarta, running the assassin right through the guts with his slim weapon. But the effect was too slow. The bastard planted his cruel dagger in Zyra’s kidney. Her Health bar plummeted and flashed green.

  She whirled, a throwing dagger spinning in her palm like a top, and sliced a second gaping mouth into the assassin’s neck. The assassin’s Health flashed critical, then his knees promptly gave out and he dropped to the floor, dead in the span of a heartbeat. Zyra didn’t look so well herself—Health depleted and the poison eating away at what little remained—but she’d survived the assault. Both of them had, though they had a slew of other worries yet remaining.

  The sounds of battle outside the throne room slammed into Roark’s mind, louder and more insistent than before. The heroes were making progress. Slaughtering his troops, no doubt.

  He ripped his rapier free of the dead assassin and turned to Zyra, desperation and adrenaline turning his voice hoarse. “I have to sit on the throne to command the troops. How do I counteract the poison?”

  With a wince, she ripped the dagger out of her back, regarding him coolly from the depths of her hood. “You can’t. The only way to get rid of contact poison is to touch it.” She tossed the dagger aside; it clattered on the stone, its blade covered liberally with her blood. “You touch it. You die. It goes away.”

  “There’s got to be a way,” Roark snapped.

  Zyra sighed heavily. “I just told you what it was.” Black smoke puffed, obscuring her from view. When she stepped back into visibility, she was at the throne. “You can thank me by not finishing the job Azibek sent that assassin to do. Live, win, and kill them. All of them.”

  Without another word, she planted both hands flat on the seat.

  “Wait—” Roark’s shout died in his throat as she crumpled to the dais at the foot of the throne. She was dead.

  Icy-black wrath bloomed in his gut as Roark stalked to the throne. Azibek had done this. Another Tyrant King—always another, it seemed—willing to kill the innocent to get his way. Roark pushed his righteous indignation to the back of his mind as he turned his eyes to the throne. Azibek would pay, but first he had to deal with the Hero raid. First he had to deal with PwnrBwner. A feral grin pulled up the corner of Roark’s lips as he noticed that the oily sheen of poison was gone, its malicious effect used up on Zyra. Not a drop remained.

  Carefully, Roark stepped over the dead Reaver and dropped onto the throne, hands planted on the armrests as he brought up the Overseer’s grimoire. He couldn’t let her sacrifice go to waste. She would respawn in two hours. In the meantime, he had a battle to w
in and an army to massacre.

  TWENTY-NINE:

  Incoming

  The map in the Overseer’s grimoire showed the heroes’ raiding party swarming down the crumbling staircase. More and more heroes flooded in by the moment. The sheer number of them was disconcerting. PwnrBwner_007 certainly hadn’t come shorthanded this time. A worm of uncertainty wriggled inside Roark’s guts. Even with the armaments, training, and traps, he wasn’t sure it would be enough. And PwnrBwner_007 wouldn’t stop—not until he had Roark’s head on a pike.

  But there was nothing he could change. Not now. All he could do was stay the course.

  Roark focused on the grimoire and let out a soft sigh of relief: the creatures of the citadel were sticking to their training. So far, so good. He watched through the magick of the Overseer spell book as a pair of Changelings harried the heroes at the front of the antechamber with bows and arrows. The heroes gave chase, swinging heavy two-handed weapons as they followed the Changelings into the hall branching toward the library. Meanwhile, Reaver Bats dove from the ceiling to attack archers and spellcasters, anyone with a ranged weapon.

  They’d taken two casualties from the heroes so far—a level-two Changeling guard who’d been posted at the top of the staircase and a Reaver Bat in the antechamber—but none of the rest seemed to be panicking or reverting back to their lone-wolf ways. Hopefully the changes would stay when the fighting intensified. Which it would.

  Roark selected the mass contact option, opening a one-way connection to every creature on the level. “You’re doing brilliant, mates. These bastard heroes might kill us all, but we’ll make them pay for every inch they take in blood. A sea of blood. We’ll drown them in it, then we’ll grief their bodies for their trouble.”

  Just then, a group of heroes pushing into the great hall triggered the massive chandelier. Chains clanked, and tackle squealed as the enormous hunk of metal dropped on top of them with a clatter. One hero—an elven woman in flowing crimson robes—died on impact, but the rest were tangled in metal, chain, and one another’s limbs.

  Sadly, no Trolls seized the opportunity to overrun the occupied heroes.

  “Great hall pack, attack them!” Roark shouted, pounding one fist against the armrest.

  That snapped the Changelings out of their stupor. A gang of the scrawny blue Trolls rushed out from behind the flipped-over tables, their claws and weapons raised, screechy battle cries rising from their throats. They swarmed the trapped heroes, tearing at them with tooth and claw as much as sword and mace. The trapped heroes began to die—a beefy human warrior in shining plate mail perished with a scream as a fine steel sword cleaved his head in two—and one of the Changelings leveled up to four, immediately Evolving into a Thursr.

  Still more heroes fought their way in through the great room door, but the Changelings were ready. They turned and scampered back, feigning a chaotic retreat, which only invited the raiders in farther. The heroes smelled weakness and intended to exploit it—to their detriment. When the heroes had overcommitted themselves, a trio of Thursrs, who’d been loitering in pockets of shadow, rushed in from the right flank, blocking the door with a massive, rough-hewn table that would take five men to budge. In one move, they cut off the heroes’ combat support and their only avenue of retreat.

  The butchery started in earnest, and Roark could only smile.

  In the throne room, the portcullis ripped open with a great screech. Kaz burst into the throne room, chest heaving, the black plumage on his headdress dancing. He pointed one of his twin Hooked Swords at Roark.

  “Is Roark okay?”

  “Fine,” Roark said absently, watching the Thursrs clashing with the dozen segregated heroes in the great hall. From the antechamber, a mage cast a Plague Cloud on the Trolls through the open top half of the table-blocked doorway. Damn. The tide shifted at once, turning back in favor of the heroes as the sulfuric yellow cloud billowed at the center of the fighting. The heroes in the great hall seemed utterly unaffected, but the Thursrs and Changelings choked and gasped, clawing at their throats and bulging, bleeding eyes.

  “Where is Zyra?” Kaz asked in between panting breaths, scanning the shadows for any sign of the Reaver.

  Roark gestured to the body at the foot of the dais which Kaz had somehow missed.

  “Respawning. That cur Azibek attacked us from behind while we were fighting the heroes at our front.” Roark held up a finger—one moment please—and switched over to the mass telepathy. “Rog mage in purple Infernal robes near the doorway to the great hall. Take him down!”

  A moment later, a level-one Stone Salamander dropped from the ceiling onto the mage’s chest, tearing at his eyes and face with rows of jagged, needle-sharp teeth.

  In the great hall, the Plague Cloud had finally dissipated. Two of the Changelings had died of its effects, but the Thursrs were now wading through the heroes, dealing out massive crushing and slicing damage while the remaining Changelings spread out and encircled the heroes, shooting arrows and slinging spears into the fray.

  Another loud screech filled the throne room as Kaz lowered the portcullis, then came to take his post beside Roark’s throne, facing the shadowy doorway down to the second floor, his twin Hooked Swords crossed and ready for battle.

  “Kaz will not let anyone attack Roark from behind,” the Thursr vowed, sounding far fiercer that Roark had ever heard before.

  At the edge of the cold fury in his gut, Roark felt a twinge of gratitude, but he couldn’t take his focus from the Overseer’s grimoire.

  The pair of Changeling archers who’d harried and led astray a small group of heroes finally reached one of the dead ends. Two sticky tongues snapped down at the last moment and snatched the scrawny blue archers up to the ceiling just as spring-loaded spears shot out of the walls, impaling the incoming heroes from both directions. The Changelings and the Stone Salamanders dropped down and made short work of the heroes’ remaining Health.

  Along another branch of the hall, a deadly firebomb exploded, orange flames scorching the walls and charbroiling flesh. One hero—a male archer in forest-green leathers—died instantly, while two more took heavy damage, their Health bars dropping into the critical zone.

  Near the smithy, a pack of Changelings were running from a trio of heroes in Divine plate mail and golden robes. The Changelings’ nimble, misshapen blue feet leapt easily over the tripwire, but the heroes blundered right through it, oblivious to its presence. The spiked grate, so cunningly attached to the ceiling, swung free, slamming two of the heroes flat against the wall. The golden-robed mage threw up her fist, tossing off an orb of golden light that swelled and swelled, burning with the fury of a miniature sun—

  Right until a Thursr stepped out of the shadows behind the mage and crushed the hero’s head like an egg with a stunning blow from his huge war hammer. Together, the Thursr and the Changelings went to work on the mail-wearing heroes frantically trying to extricate themselves from the clutches of the spiked grate.

  In the opposite corner of the map, heroes were pushing past the great hall now, though their ranks thinned out considerably the farther into the floor they went. A group of four, half-dead from their battle with the Thursrs and Changelings in the great hall, entered the kitchen searching for Trolls to massacre. There was a bloodthirsty gleam in their eyes. They wanted to kill, they wanted vengeance. They were about to be sorely disappointed instead.

  A level-two spell Roark had inscribed while still under Azibek’s magic-heightening blessing—If anything but a Troll, Bat, or Salamander crosses this threshold, the air in this room will ignite—blew the heroes from their feet and triggered the firebomb trap set up nearby. The inferno killed two outright and sent the others’ Health bars down under ten percent, life vials strobing manically.

  “Anyone left alive in the great hall, get to the kitchen and finish off the heroes there,” Roark barked. A wounded Thursr and a pair of Stone Salamanders raced off to carry out the order. “Leg it, mates. The mage is healing them as we spea
k.”

  All over, the scene was the same. Infernal creatures leading heroes into traps, drawing them away from support, cutting off their retreat, and surprise attacking them from above. The creatures were taking casualties, of course, but the heroes were as well. But in spite of their valiant efforts, the raiding party was pushing deeper into the floor—though it was a slow, ponderous push, almost as if they were dazed. Clearly they hadn’t been expecting this sort of resistance from the creatures of the citadel. Certainly not on the first level.

  Some small, cruel part of Roark felt like cackling. Served them right, the whole lot of them.

  Just before the iron portcullis opened, Roark caught sight of a level-five Thursr and a level-three Changeling on the map in the corridor. The pair of them sprinted inside the throne room and spun around, weapons raised, facing whatever threat had chased them into the throne room. At Roark’s side, Kaz looked from the shadowy doorway leading downstairs to the iron portcullis, torn between defending them from the immediate threat or the insidious one that could strike without warning.

  A nameplate coming down the corridor caught Roark’s eye: [PwnrBwner_OG]. Strange that he’d changed his name. But the name change wasn’t the only difference. The status on the hero now marked him as a Level 22 High Combat Cleric.

  PwnrBwner_OG strode into the throne room surrounded by a small group of heroes. Roark thought he recognized the dark elf Dude_Farkowitz, now under the nameplate [Gazebo_Goatee], and the fire-slinging mage Junior inside a Level 15 Necro-Berserker. The other three, however, he didn’t recognize.

  PwnrBwner_OG had also swapped the archer’s leathers and bow for heavy obsidian armor that had obviously been enchanted. Broad, spiked pauldrons rose up higher than his head on either shoulder, connected by a thorny chest plate edged in pure gold. Arcs of blue and orange energy zipped along its glossy black surface. In his obsidian-gauntleted fist, PwnrBwner_OG carried a massive mace; its dark green handle was covered in spiny projections, and it flared into a glowing red crystal layered and shaped like the craggy, angry petals of a malicious rose.