by Zac Gorman
Her father’s refusal to listen to reason about the Black Mountain had driven a wedge between them that Iphigenia wasn’t sure could ever be removed. She wasn’t one to beg. She’d never done it before. She’d always taken her disappointments in stride. But this time she’d pleaded with her father, absolutely certain he was making a grave mistake by interfering in the dealings of the dungeon, and he’d simply shut her out. It wasn’t a surprise. Iphigenia knew the real reason. And it wasn’t because her father honestly suspected that Umberfallian spies were having secretive dealings with the Master of the Black Mountain; it was because her father hated the dungeon with all his heart. He blamed it for the death of his son. Although he never would’ve admitted it, perhaps not even to himself, Iphigenia suspected that her father would gladly see the dungeon destroyed along with every creature that lived within its walls if it meant a fleeting moment of vengeance for his beloved Ingo. Unfortunately, destroying everything in the dungeon included Thisby.
For the first time since her experience in the Black Mountain, Iphigenia felt helpless.
She dangled her fingers in the fountain water. It was warmer than she’d expected. Without realizing why she was doing it, Iphigenia hiked up the bottom of her dress and began to splash out toward the center of the fountain. When she reached the pedestal, she placed her hand on the cold marble and began to climb up toward the statue, just as Thisby had done on her last night at the castle. She wasn’t as good at climbing as the nimble gamekeeper, but after some effort and a few false starts, the Princess managed to climb high enough to swing her leg up over the lion’s back and sit upon it to gaze out at the stars.
The air turned her wet legs to ice, and she laughed at her lack of forethought. Below her dangling feet, she could read Thisby’s inscription. She hoped that no one else would ever find it, at least not in her lifetime. Maybe thousands of years from now, it would be okay if some white-haired historian read it and wondered over what it meant, but for now she preferred it to be their secret.
She looked up. The Black Mountain was hundreds of miles away, but somehow it felt extremely close. When she squinted, she imagined that she could faintly see its jagged outline looming over the horizon. As she watched the edge of the castle grounds where the darkened tree line met the sky, Iphigenia could feel her heart swell, and suddenly, with great clarity, she knew what needed to be done. There, awash in the night sky, the Princess set her resolve and made a silent promise: somehow, some way, she was going to protect the Black Mountain and every creature within it. From Thisby to the smallest, cruddiest imp. Even if it meant defying her father and her kingdom.
She wondered if Thisby had made a similar pledge, and it made her feel closer to her friend despite being separated by an entire country. Somebody had to look out for the creatures in the Black Mountain, and Thisby shouldn’t have to face that challenge alone. There were some things that were worth risking everything for, and as Iphigenia understood in that moment, friendship was one of them.
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK!
Thisby awoke with a start to Grunda’s familiar knock.
Jumping up from her desk—this time managing to successfully tip over her inkwell—Thisby raced to her bedroom door in a mad dash and flung it open.
“Grunda!” she shouted.
But it wasn’t. The creature at the door was a bit too thin and far too dead to be her former mentor.
“Hello,” said the skeleton. “Remember me?”
Thisby stared blankly as her groggy brain tried to parse the question. She rubbed her right eye with the palm of her hand, as if not seeing clearly had been the problem.
“We met in the castle. Castle Grimstone,” he added, as if there were another castle with which she might be confusing it.
Oh, THAT castle! Castle Grimstone! Now I remember! I thought you were referring to the cotillion last week at Castle Montgrave! You remember, right? I had the lavender ball gown and you made a joke about how the caviar was “egg-cellent”?
Thisby cracked the door wider and waved for the skeleton to come into her room. Feeling something caked on her face, she touched her cheek as he passed and realized that there was dried ink on it.
“Jono, right? Can I help you?”
The skeleton rattled into her room and gazed around in wonder.
“Wow! This is so nice! I love what you’ve done here!” His voice was gentle and earnest.
“Thanks, but, um, why’re you here?” she mumbled.
“Oh!” he said, grabbing a bit of parchment from his pocket. It was folded up into an uneven little square, several more times than seemed necessary. It looked as if he’d been folding and unfolding it all morning.
Jono handed it to Thisby, who opened it.
“I’ve been assigned here, you see? With the recent, uh, messiness of this whole transition, Ma—I mean, Overseer Marl, believed that it might be best if you had a personal assistant. You know, somebody to take care of your day-to-day stuff!”
Thisby stopped reading the parchment, which was mostly just foil stamps and insignias anyway, and looked at Jono. He’d picked up a notebook by its edge in a way that made Thisby’s stomach twist as she imagined the pages ripping free from their binding.
“Put that down!” Thisby said as politely as she could—which was not very.
Mingus, who’d remained silent until now, possibly asleep, joined in the conversation. “Thisby doesn’t need an assistant! She already has me!”
“Yes, but the letter . . . ,” said Jono.
Thisby felt sorry for him. Whoever this skeleton was in his past life had clearly only been about her age when he’d died and now here he was, a resurrected skeleton brought back from beyond the grave by whatever stupid dark magic some arrogant wizard had dreamt up, and somehow, he’d managed to stay positive despite all that. It was an impressive level of optimism that Thisby found charming. And he did seem eager to help . . .
“I don’t see the harm in having two assistants,” Thisby offered, refusing to look at the angry slime, who was staring at her, mouth agape.
“Oh! Great! That’s great!” said Jono excitedly. “Is there anything I can do for you right now?”
Thisby scooped up the partially finished weekly staff reviews from her desk and handed them over. They’d have to do. She suspected nobody was really reading these things anyway.
“You can take these up to the Overseer,” she said.
“Yes! Right away!” he replied, and was out of her room in such a hurry that he didn’t even bother to close the door behind him. The moment his bony frame had disappeared behind the doorway, Mingus let out a pained groan.
“Come on! You can’t be serious!”
“What choice do we have?”
Mingus slid down into his jar. He’d already begun to glow a dull red, which Thisby knew meant he was annoyed. She unlocked the lantern and lifted Mingus from her desk, hanging it on the hook on her enormous backpack, which she then slid on in her usual way—both arms through and lift with your legs. Her bag rattled like an overstuffed kitchen cabinet as its contents settled into place, and she instinctively reached up to steady Mingus’s jar and stop it from swaying.
“It won’t be so bad,” she said, “and besides, we could use all the help we can get.”
Mingus’s color didn’t change.
“And how has that ‘help’ worked out so far?” he asked.
Thisby didn’t respond. It was usually best not to say anything when he got like this.
They walked down the hall, past the spot where the mindworm liked to hang out. She glanced expectantly over at the pockmarked wall, the same as she’d done every day since Grunda had left, but there was no sign of life. The mindworm’s message had been weeks ago, and it was still the last she’d heard from her former mentor.
Thisby reached the ladder and was surprised to find a familiar bony face waiting for her.
“How’d you get back so fast?” she asked, genuinely impressed.
If Jon
o could have blushed, he probably would have.
“It’s easy to run fast when you don’t run out of breath, boss.”
“Huh. I never thought of it that way,” said Thisby as she passed him and began to descend the ladder. “Well, c’mon, I guess! We’ve got a busy day ahead of us!”
“See? Maybe this won’t be so bad after all,” she whispered to Mingus as he dangled over her shoulder, trying his best to look sullen. Nuanced looks were difficult for him, but Thisby got the gist.
Mingus snorted in reply and began to glow a fiery, contemptuous red. He wasn’t about to give up pouting easily. Thisby sighed. It was going to be a long day.
And with that, the three of them descended the ladder, three hundred and four rungs in all, down into the yawning mouth of the dark dungeon.
Chapter 6
It didn’t take long for Thisby to realize there was trouble in the dungeon. The fire bats were out of their cave, the trolls were wide awake when they should have been sleeping, and—most tellingly—the dire rats were acting strange. They scurried from their holes, running this way and that, paying no mind to Thisby and the others. She was nearly bowled over when a pack of the barrel-size rats surprised her by bursting from behind a closed door the moment she’d opened it.
Inside the room, they discovered that the poor things had been trying to gnaw through the solid oak door for hours in a desperate attempt to escape. It was a bad omen. Dire rats were one of the first indicators of any serious trouble in the dungeon. If the dire rats were trying to get away from something, it was often best to follow suit. Unfortunately for Thisby, her job was to head toward trouble, not away from it.
They’d been walking for an hour or more when Thisby heard a strange cry from up ahead, followed by what was quickly becoming an all-too-familiar shiiing! from behind her. Thisby turned sharply.
“Put that thing away! I’m not going to tell you again!” said Thisby.
Jono sheepishly tucked his short sword back into its rusty scabbard.
“Sorry, boss. It’s force of habit. Like a sneeze or something.”
Thisby rolled her eyes. She hoped his bravado wasn’t intended to impress her. She abhorred the use of violence against the monsters of the dungeon. It was the primary reason she never carried a weapon herself, the secondary reason being that she didn’t have one. Either way, she’d always considered violence to be an absolute last resort.
She thought about her former boss, Roquat, and how much he’d enjoyed doling out beatings for misbehavior. His idea of discipline wasn’t so much, “Spare the rod, spoil the child,” as it was, “Spare the rod? Why? We’ve got plenty of rods! In fact, this one has barbs on it. You hit someone with this rod and they won’t be sitting down for a week!” And what had it gotten him in the end? For all his posturing, for all his brutality, he was gone, and Thisby, armed only with her lantern, was now the Senior Head Gamekeeper—whatever that meant.
“If you go in there with your sword drawn, it’s like you’ve already made the first attack,” Thisby reminded him.
Jono nodded in agreement, but Thisby had a sneaking suspicion it wouldn’t be the last time they’d have this conversation. Some habits are hard to break.
“Just be calm, okay? Relax,” she added.
Thisby wished she could follow her own advice.
The same awful cry rang out again. It was a strange, otherworldly sound. A bit like mashing every key on a pipe organ at once. Thisby couldn’t place it. Before that morning, she had been sure that she knew every noise in the dungeon, from the rhythmic drip of a stalactite to the frenzied bark of a gnoll during mating season, but this was something new. Crouching down, she followed the noise carefully, slinking through a tight passageway and at last peeking her head around the corner. Thisby immediately felt sick.
In the middle of the room was a rock golem—for all she knew it could have easily been the one who’d chipped her tooth several weeks back—or, more appropriately, it was what was left of a rock golem. Its body had been smashed into pieces, torn apart at the waist, its legs crushed to rubble, and a yellowish, acrid smoke streamed from its wounds. Prior to this moment Thisby had thought rock golems were made up entirely of solid rock, but now, horribly, she could see that they were actually filled with a sort of ooze, something almost like molten lava, that spilled out onto the ground and burned the floor where it fell.
Thisby stepped into the open chamber without thinking. The horror of the scene had clouded her mind to even the obvious thought that whatever had done this might still be in the chamber with them.
“Thisby, wait,” whispered Mingus, but it was too late. She was already approaching the wounded golem, moving as if in a trance.
The poor creature cried out again, and Thisby shuddered. She realized why she’d never heard the noise before—up until now, she’d thought rock golems were mute. She’d never heard one make any sort of vocalization. Not so much as a grunt or whimper. She didn’t realize they could. Now that she’d heard it, she was certain it was a sound that she’d never forget.
The rock golem turned its head, which was thankfully still attached to its neck. Below that, however, just below where the creature’s ribs would have been if it’d had bones, the rock golem had been torn clean in half. There were rending marks in the stone that looked as if they’d been made by impossibly sharp claws. Claws capable of cutting stone with a single swipe. The golem stared at Thisby with its black onyx eyes.
“Thisby . . . ,” started Mingus, but words failed him.
The rock golem convulsed and more of the burning ooze spilled from its torso like lava erupting from its volcano of a chest. Thisby watched the ooze fall to the ground, where it immediately hardened into delicate crystals as it rapidly cooled on the limestone floor. It was both beautiful and sad.
“Who did this?” she asked softly.
The creature gave no response, which wasn’t exactly a surprise. Thisby had only just learned that rock golems could make any noise at all, and this one wasn’t in much shape for conversation, even if it could understand her.
Jono approached and laid a hand on Thisby’s shoulder. She jumped.
“Can you do something?” he asked.
Thisby tried to stop her heart from pounding and shook her head. Even if she’d wanted to put the poor creature out of its misery, she had no idea how, and this was a bigger job than Mingus’s healing magic could handle. Thisby walked closer to the monster’s massive boulder of a head and placed her hand on it.
The golem blinked its stony eyes impassively, and when it did, Thisby could see little clouds of dust rise from where its eyelids rubbed against the sockets. She wondered if anybody else had ever been close enough to a rock golem before to notice.
Thisby slid her backpack off her shoulders and withdrew a notebook. Sitting down only an arm’s reach from its face, she began to sketch. The beast sighed. She could smell its breath, like a mixture of copper and wet bricks drying after a summer rain. She made a note of that. It was nearly two hours later that the rock golem closed its eyes for the last time, but since the moment that Thisby sat down, it had never cried out again.
In the end, there was nothing to do but stand up and leave. The three of them—Thisby, Mingus, and Jono—walked for some time in silence, not knowing what to say.
“Jono,” said Thisby at last, breaking the long silence.
The skeleton turned to her with his empty eyes.
“Yes, boss?” said Jono quietly.
“Two things,” said Thisby. “First off, I don’t like ‘boss.’ It’s weird. We’re basically the same age. Call me Thisby, please. Second, I need you to do something for me . . .”
“What’s that, b—Thisby?”
“I need you to find out exactly what the Overseer has set loose in my dungeon.”
Overseer Marl paced in her chamber, too excited to sleep.
Her long evening robe whipped darkly as she paced, making her look a bit like a raven caught in a snare trap. Her green ha
ir was pulled up into a loose bun on the verge of coming undone, and for some reason she was wearing all her jewelry, as if she’d been sleeping in it. There’d be no more sleep tonight, though. No one could be expected to sleep with an idea this good. The idea had come to her all at once, like a lightning bolt, but after it’d shocked her out of bed, she’d begun to see it for what it really was: a ball of yarn wrapped around a diamond. The idea was pure and beautiful but surrounded by an absolute knot of details, exactly the kind that Marl loved to unravel.
Since she’d arrived at the Black Mountain, these kinds of ideas had been coming to her at a record pace. Marl had always been clever; it was why she’d been assigned to work undercover in Umberfall to begin with, but these ideas weren’t just clever, they were positively inspired. It was tough to keep up with them. At times, it seemed like a small voice was whispering in her ear, providing her with constant inspiration for how to run the dungeon better. Actually, that was exactly what was happening.
The voices had started innocently enough. Replace the loose tiles in the hallway. There’s a dead mermaid stinking up the lake on level two. That kind of stuff. In the beginning, Marl had mistaken the voices for her own inner monologue, but lately the thoughts were getting a bit more invasive. It was somewhat troubling, sure, but good ideas were good ideas, regardless of the source. She’d studied psychometry at the Grand College of Arcanology—go, Werewolves!—and knew that being in a place with as much latent supernatural power as Castle Grimstone, it wasn’t uncommon to encounter ghosts and spirits who wished to communicate from the Other Side. If Marl had instead studied the history of the Black Mountain, the voices likely would’ve been a bit more disconcerting. However, as it was, she knew there were no bad ideas in brainstorming and took all suggestions—whether they came from the living, dead, or otherwise—under advisement.
She knew about the Eyes in the Dark, of course. She’d learned all about him in school, and her opinion was the same as that of all her professors and grand mages: the Eyes in the Dark was just a boogeyman to scare people into behaving. Whether or not the Eyes in the Dark was real—she suspected he might be—she believed what she was taught, that the concept of the Eyes in the Dark as the source of all evil in the world was patently absurd. Old, superstitious wizards loved to speak about things that way. Everything was a duality; light and dark, good and evil. But that way of thinking had gone out of style long ago in popular wizard education. As far as Marl was concerned, the Eyes in the Dark was just a nuisance. Like a rat that lived in her basement and would occasionally get into the food. There were far bigger problems to worry about, like the threat of Umberfallian spies and, perhaps worst of all, the general condition of the dungeon itself. Thankfully, her new idea was going to change everything.