by Eric Vall
“Alright.” I nodded firmly, and glanced at all of my minions as they stood in front of me in a line. “Let’s head off. I’d like to get to the frontlines as quickly as possible.”
The high queen was correct, and it only took us three hours to find Bickenbane on foot. It was a small village but as equally as beautiful as the grand palace. All the buildings were crafted well and none of them seemed to be rundown or dirty. The nobility of Tamarisch took great care of their people, and it showed in their structures and architecture. The people there were kind and some of them very excited to see the High King and Queen on their streets, a few even threw themselves on the ground and bowed at our feet.
Once, we were forced to stop and ask for directions to the dungeon, and we were informed there was no known entrance, that it would have to be dug out of the earth first. An appalling idea if we didn’t have my dark powers, but easily done with them. The person told us we would have to go up the mountain’s west side where the only known path was, and there would be a fork. If we wanted to find the dungeon, we would take the left fork and follow it all the way to the end where it stopped. That is where the dungeon lay.
We followed his instructions perfectly, buckled down our packs, wrapped ourselves in our warmest blankets, and headed up the west side of the mountain. We reached the dead end of the path around mid-afternoon, and the sun was slowly sinking behind us. The rock face in front of us was a steep incline, a good place to have put an entrance to a dungeon if it weren’t buried within the rock.
“Everyone ready?” Annalise asked the others as she strapped her unnamed sword to her back and made sure Bloodscale was protectively in its scabbard. “We won’t be able to replenish supplies until we reach Machstein, so does everyone have what they need?”
Carmedy dug her sleek paws through her pack, then patted down the small pouches tied around her waist. “Yup! I’m good to go!”
“Just make sure you got that heat stuff, pussycat? I’m not looking to get frostbite on any of these journeys through the tundra.” Rana cackled, and Carmedy’s face broke with concern as she searched through the pouches once again, but Rana quickly stopped her. “I’m joking, I’m joking.”
“Morrigan?” I asked, and her almost black eyes flitted to mine,
“I need for nothing, Master, and if I did, I know you will provide,” the elf said softly as she bowed her head to me.
I nodded to all of them and raised my hands into the air, my fingers tensed and my palms upward. Four pools of gray smoke swirled up from the ground, and a freezing wind blasted through the portals as once again sickly thin arms reached through and pulled themselves up and out. My ice demons towered over us, and their gangly arms swung while their curled fingers brushed the rocky ground.
I pointed forward to the wall of rock, and the four ice demons lumbered forward, their breaths coming out in wheezes and squeals. They tore through the rock, using their gnarled hands like crude shovels. Hard packed dirt and rock flew out behind them as they burrowed deeper, and their backs soon disappeared into the mountain.
We waited for about an hour then moved in, and once my eyes adjusted to the light, I paved the way for them at the front. Four hours we journeyed the rough terrain in the demon made cavern, and I was alerted by the screeching noises from the ice beasts that they had hit something of interest. I stopped and raised a hand for the others to halt behind me,
“What is it?” Carmedy asked in a whisper, her tail held between her hands as she twisted it anxiously.
Though I couldn’t understand the primitive ice demon language, there was a resemblance to ours in it, and I could hear two words as they resounded through their pea brains.
“Big and gold?” I whispered under my breath.
“What was that?” the red-haired fox questioned, her head inclined towards me as her green eyes examined me with concern.
“They found something, I can feel it,” I twisted my head to look directly in the fox’s eyes, “big and gold.”
Rana’s expression changed, her eyebrows dropped, her eyes squinted, and a sly half-smile spread over her lips as she cocked her head.
“Big and gold?” she asked back in a whisper, pleased by those words. She didn’t even wait for a response before she bolted forward and her bouncing curls flew out behind her.
Carmedy raced out to stop her, but the fox was gone in a flash of red hair. We could hear her racing down as rocks and pebbles shifted under her feet, and we ran to keep up. Rana reached the end before any of us, and her exclamation and loud curses echoed back to us. Climbing over loose boulders and stone, we finally joined Rana at the bottom. She was nearly hyperventilating as she stared up in awe, and her arms hung limply by her sides as she turned slowly in a circle.
Looming above her and pressed into the rock was a massive fifteen-foot door. As I approached with bated breath, two twin flames crackled pleasantly to life on each side, the deity’s magic showing itself already, no doubt. Illuminated by the flickering flames, we could see all of the details etched into the soft gold. All of my minions huddled together to examine the scenes engraved into the metal. The left panel of the door portrayed happiness, people laughing, eating, and dancing. Each one was different, but each was jovial as the drawn people smiled, but the right side was much stranger. Each scene carved into the gold there showed horrible death and destruction, not unlike the life I used to know. Decaying bodies, eyeless skulls, endless fires being laid across the land. It was both horrifying and beautiful at the same time as we studied it together.
I stepped back and examined the door as a whole. It was a masterpiece of work, and surprising for the entrance to a dungeon. Most dungeons we entered only had big hulking entrance ways that led to black passageways.
“Who put it here?” I wondered out loud. “Was the deity inside kept prisoner like I was? Sealed and locked away from all those who dared to enter?”
The molded and beaten gold door handles were shaped into elegant hands, the left side hand pointed upward with the pointer and middle finger extended, and the thumb pressed against the ring and pinky fingers, and the right-side hand pointed down, but the position of the fingers was the same. I stepped closer and bent down in front of them and admired their handiwork. Every inch of this door was painstakingly made, and it must have taken years to craft each side. I ran a tentative finger down the wrist of one of the gilded hands.
Morrigan glided up behind me, and as she did, Fea and Macha cawed loudly in protest once they were in close proximity to the door. The elf’s white brows furrowed, and she cooed to them softly, speaking quiet words in a different language I couldn’t understand. The sleek ravens were unnerved, and it struck me as odd. Fea and Macha were silent most of the time unless they sensed magic near.
I glanced up at Morrigan, but her eyes didn’t meet mine as they stayed hard and focused on the gilt hands. Beneath her hood, her eyes glinted then turned wholly black, and the mage mark on her forehead burned dimly like fiery embers. She blinked once, and her lips parted as she murmured something under her breath. Then her gaze wandered over the expanse of the massive door slowly before they returned back to the hands. Suddenly, her eyes returned to normal, and she blinked in quick succession as if to clear her eyes of dust.
“There’s magic here, but I cannot sense where it is emanating from,” she murmured to me.
“I felt it too,” I said as I backed up and admired the way the dancing light brushed against the glittering gold and made it glow and spark. “I wonder what it is.”
“What does this mean?” the black-haired cat asked as she gestured towards the handles. “Why hands?”
I had no answer for her because I was thinking the same thing. Did hands have some type of significance to this god? I shook my head doubtfully at the cat, and she pushed out her lips in thought as she crossed her arms over her ample chest. Morrigan came around me and touched the smooth hands, and their images were reflected in the rippling pools of her dark eyes.
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��As above, so below,” she said in a bored tone, and her hands dropped from the cold metal.
“What does that mean?” Rana snapped and wrinkled her nose as if she’d smelled something terrible. One of Morrigan’s slender hands lifted into the air and gestured toward the right side of the door.
“On earth,” she uttered, and her hand gestured to the left side, “as it is in heaven.”
“Ohhh, I get it!” Carmedy bobbed her head fanatically.
Rana made an exasperated face at her, her mouth pulled down at the corners. “You do not, ya ninny.” The fox-woman cackled with laughter, and Carmedy gasped, her usually smooth black tail puffed up and snapped behind her back with annoyance,
“I get it! You know, with the above and the below and the good and the bad, the happy and the sad,” she shouted as she waved madly between the two sides but suddenly, she froze except her black ears that twitched and rotated as if listening to something closely.
“D-do you guys hear that?” she whispered in disbelief, and as I watched, her pupils dilated, and she shuffled towards the door and pressed an ear to it.
We all stopped and listened carefully.
Annalise, who was silent this entire time perked up. “Yes,” she breathed as she pressed her palms against the gold, “it sounds like people cheering.”
“No,” Rana disagreed, her ears also twitching with interest, “it sounds like coins clicking together.”
I concentrated hard but heard nothing as I glanced over at my minions who were enraptured with the sounds.
“It sounds like candied bacon frying in a sizzling pan,” the cat-woman sighed, as she held her hands close to her chest.
As Morrigan came forward, I noticed the glassy, faraway looks in their eyes, and knew something was wrong. Something that I wasn’t experiencing was taking over the minds of my minions.
“No,” Morrigan exhaled softly, “it sounds like the pages of a book turning.”
Before I could voice my concerns, the golden doors shuddered with a peal of loud thunder and then pulled back to open the way forward. Bright yellow light streamed out as if it were the sun trapped inside of the dungeon instead of another god.
All four of my minions took a deep breath, and it echoed against the walls like a chorus. Annalise was the first to pass the threshold, and she walked as if she were in a dream, her head straight forward and her back straight. Morrigan was the second, and her blood red winter coat swirled around her feet. I grabbed Carmedy’s wrist to prevent her from going in, but her slick fur slid out of my hand, and she was gone with the others as she and Rana moved away from me in a daze.
I couldn’t sense the deity yet, but I could tell he was here in some way, moving his essence around as I could. I too stepped through the door, and they creaked, shuddered again and began to close. My minions had been on the other side of the entrance to his dungeon, and he already trapped them under his spell.
And I was already growing angry.
My minions were mine and mine alone, and he was trying to take them away from me so early in the game. I was going to enjoy ripping his powers away and then stealing the life from his body.
Chapter Three
My minions seemed to be in a deep trance as I followed after them. The halls in this dungeon reminded me of the lava god in Valasara. There were no craggy walls or protruding rocks. Instead, all the walls including the floor were smooth and polished enough to see my reflection in them. The other thing I was intrigued by was the fact that the walls and ground I tread upon were made of solid gold just like the door, every inch of it.
I turned back at a loud crunching sound, and as the gilded doors closed, I saw the dirt and rock falling in around it and closing off the hole my ice demons had made in the earth. This deity was trapping us in its dungeon from the outside in.
This was going to be more interesting than I thought.
My minions went on without me, so I ran a few steps to catch up to them, but when I rounded the next corner I stopped. The path veered off to the right into a huge carved doorway where Morrigan, Annalise, and Rana stood in a line, and only the black cat was missing, so I moved towards them and looked into the brightly lit hallway I assumed Carmedy had gone down.
I gripped my leather gloved hands into fists and moved into the mouth of the archway, but the others didn’t follow after. I turned back confused, and when I looked into all of their eyes, it was plain to me the deity was controlling their minds. Each set of eyes I knew so well were the same color that surrounded us. The pupils and even the whites of their eyes were now glittering gold.
“Where’s Carmedy?” I questioned as I looked into each of their stunning faces, but they only stared back at me blankly. Rage bubbled up in my stomach, not at them but at the deity who thought he could play with me like this so early in the game. When I spoke again, I spoke more to the deity than to my companions as the anger was apparent in my tight voice. “Since it seems you didn’t hear me, I’ll ask again, where’s Carmedy?”
They didn’t speak or react to my tone but instead raised their hands in unison and pointed down the hall I was standing in. I glanced towards the other end and could make out a large room on the other side, and beyond that, I could faintly hear Carmedy’s voice.
I knew she was safe from the sound of her lilting voice and the gentle beat of her heart, but I was still on edge. The presence of the god was all around us, but I still couldn’t pinpoint his location. I could already tell he was a wily one from the way he snatched my minions' minds so effortlessly, but it made me wonder, why hadn’t he done the same to me?
Perhaps he had, but his power was so insignificant I hadn’t noticed his mental attack. It was one thing to charm a mortal, but quite another to charm a god. Especially if that god was me.
I took a step forward then looked back to my women, and they stood utterly still, their eyes glazed with golden light. “Are you coming?”
“One cannot dream another’s dreams,” the women murmured in harmony with the voice of this dungeon’s god. The extra voice was male and very deep as it recited the words with them.
“What does that mean?” I questioned with furrowed brows as I scrutinized them, but I only received the same answer. I turned back towards the hall, knowing if I asked any more questions, I’d only receive the same cryptic response.
This dungeon was different than all the others. It was brightly lit, so much so it made me want to squint my eyes. I kept a wary eye on the walls in case the god was hiding in plain sight, but I found nothing except the flawless gold and my own face reflected back. When I reached the end of the hall and the louder call of Carmedy’s voice, I looked back over my shoulder, but my minions were gone. My heart was hammering. I wanted to go after Carmedy, but now the other three were also missing.
It was best to go forward, toward the one I knew I was close to. I growled deep in my throat and stepped into the grand room beyond. Carmedy was there, but she didn’t raise her head or speak to me as I entered.
Instead, the cat-girl alchemist was seated in a cushy, high back chair and a long table was stretched out in front of her. The table was intricate and masterfully made like everything else we had seen so far, but what was on top of it made my eyes widen. Piles and plates of food, goblets filled to the brim with wine, trays and platters heavy with steaming morsels, but it wasn’t just any food, everything laid out and displayed were sweets, candies, and treats.
All of Carmedy’s favorite things were displayed out in front of her, and the cat-woman was taking no time as she shoved a fist full of pies, cupcakes, and macaroons into her open, salivating mouth. Her eyes were glowing gold like the others, but they were wide and excited as she shoveled chocolate pudding onto her tongue and gulped it down.
I watched with horror as she soon emptied a plate and moved on to the next. Then the empty plate magically refilled before my eyes, creating an endless cycle of food. She was eating so fast her arms and mouth were a blur as they moved in tandem, stacking a cupca
ke on top of a heavily frosted piece of cake and pushing it into her open maw. She moved faster and faster, the sounds of her lips smacking and her teeth chewing echoed around the walls, but then I heard it, a soft sound between chews.
“Help me,” she squeaked through a mouthful.
That was all the encouragement I needed, and I ran forward, grabbed her by the shoulders, and pulled her away from the table. To my horror, my hands passed through the cat’s shoulder, and I tried again, but the same thing happened. I tried one last time and swiped out at Carmedy, but it passed through her like she was merely made out of smoke. I shook my head and decided on a different course of action.
I walked around Carmedy’s high back chair, came to the middle of the table, and gripped its edge. Inhuman strength rushed through the muscles in my avatar’s body, and I toppled the table. Food crashed and spilled over the floor, but still, Carmedy’s hands moved in the air as she plucked unseen foods from the space and brought them to her lips. As I stepped back, the fallen table disappeared with a snap, only to reappear right where it was before. Then I heard it. The noise started softly like it was coming from far away, but then it got louder.
The deity was laughing.
I whipped around the room and studied each wall as I searched for the bastard, but he was nowhere in sight. Rage flowed freely in my stomach, and I glanced back at Carmedy, who was still stuffing her face with an elated expression. She asked for my help, and I could give her none, and it pained me deeply.
“Seems an appropriate punishment for a glutton, doesn’t it?” the deep voice asked from above. His voice was calm, almost soothing … which annoyed me more in this situation.
“Show yourself!” I commanded as I reached into my void pocket for the God Slayer.
“No,” the voice answered softly back, and I gritted my teeth furiously. “You see, I have other things to show you, and if I revealed myself now, all of that work would go to waste. I’m not as fancy as the other gods. I’m not going to trick you into falling into a pit of snakes, or attack you with goblins. With my dungeon, you have to work hard to get to it, you have to earn your way in. Half the battle is even finding the dungeon itself but … you cheated with your little pets … no fun, good sir, not very fair. It once took one party of ten men five years to find my dungeon, and it took you, what? A couple of hours. How disappointing.”