by Zac Gorman
Giant’s Crossing was a series of narrow bridges stretched like crisscrossing guitar strings over the mouth of a yawning abyss three hundred yards wide. On every side were thundering waterfalls, which fed down into the widest part of the Floating River, known as Long Lost Lake—at least that was what Grunda had called it. Thisby had never fully understood how such a huge lake could be lost for very long. If you had the misfortune of falling into Giant’s Crossing and the thousand-foot drop didn’t kill you—which it most definitely would—the horrors waiting below the surface of Long Lost Lake would be waiting to finish the job.
Thisby studied the map again. Assuming that Bero’s additions were correct, there didn’t seem to be any way to avoid the crossing.
“Is something wrong?” asked Bero.
“Not yet,” said Thisby gravely.
The Master awoke, or perhaps it’s better to say “hatched,” from a shell of crusted purple goo. He spent several minutes choking and gasping for air on his filthy cell floor before finally getting his wits about him and considering how he’d ended up in such a predicament.
“This is what I get for helping a goblin,” he muttered to himself.
Leaning against the only piece of furniture in the room—a foul-smelling straw mattress—he picked out bits of slime that were painfully caked in the horseshoe of hair that encircled his thankfully mostly bald head as he took inventory of his situation. The outlook wasn’t great.
The Master, in his many years as such, had never left Castle Grimstone. He’d never set foot in the dungeon, and that included the room he was currently in, called, confusingly enough, “the dungeon.” While it may seem obvious that the dungeon would have a dungeon, it was, oddly enough, perhaps its least utilized room.4
He was only a few floors below Thisby’s bedroom, really just a stone’s throw from the castle gates, and yet he might as well have been in the Deep Down for as much good as it did him. He checked his pockets and was surprised to discover that in her haste to capture him, Marl hadn’t taken his things. He still had a few gold coins, a bottle of facial moisturizer—which he desperately needed at the moment—and his scrobble. It was the last of these that gave him any hope at all. If he was lucky, the gamekeeper was still alive and possibly willing to free him.
There was a chance that she wouldn’t. The Master and Grunda had struck a deal: he’d give Thisby’s entry form the official stamp without Marl finding out, and if Thisby won the Wretched Scrattle and became the Master, he’d get to leave the Black Mountain in one piece, never to return. The way he saw it, if somebody aside from Thisby won, they’d take him to the hangman as soon as they’d settled into his chair. If nobody won and Marl stuck around, it’d only be a matter of time before a blade found its way to his neck as he slept. And getting rid of Marl himself was too risky as long as she had the backing of the King. He was doomed any way he sliced it; the only option was to take Grunda’s deal and hope the gamekeeper would be true to her word.
Still, he wasn’t eager to call her and ask for help. It was hard to imagine what she would get out of freeing him from prison, and the Master had a hard time understanding why anybody would ever do anything unless they stood to gain from it in some way. Ultimately, however, he had no choice but to try.
The Master was fishing around in his pocket for the scrobble when he heard voices coming down the hall and saw the first flicker of torchlight. He removed his hand from his pocket and waited as the voices grew near.
“These things happen,” said one of the voices. “It’s not worth worrying about.”
“I know, it’s just . . . poor kid,” said the other voice. “You know I used to babysit her sometimes during goblin holidays.”
Their footsteps grew closer, and the Master considered pretending to be asleep. It seemed like a pretty classic eavesdropping ruse, but he was still the Master and refused to lower himself to such infantile tricks.
“Let me go. Now,” he boomed when the voices reached his cell.
The two ghouls who appeared were shocked to see the Master awake and mostly uncrusted. The taller of the two ghouls he recognized as one of his gate guards, and the smaller one looked familiar, but he couldn’t place where he’d seen her around the castle. The bigger one was carrying the torch, while the smaller one carried a bag filled with scrolls and a hammer. They both instinctively bowed.
“Master!” said the smaller ghoul. “So good to see you awake!”
“Let me out of here right now or I will fry what is left of your desecrated husks in molten lead and use your parts as paperweights for all eternity!”
It was a pretty good threat as far as threats go.
“I-I’m sorry, but we can’t,” said the bigger ghoul.
“What do you mean, you can’t?” snarled the Master.
“Overseer’s orders,” said the small one. “Said you were a traitor to the crown. Anybody who helps you has to answer to the King of Nth.”
The Master’s face turned bright red.
“And that’s worse than answering to me?” he yelled.
Truthfully, as long as he was behind bars, he knew that it was. All this time cultivating an aura of fear in the dungeon and it’d been undone by that conniving bureaucratic wizard.
“Fine,” said the Master, realizing his threats would be idle so long as he was the one locked up. “Be that way.”
The ghouls muttered some sort of awkward farewell and attempted to hurry on, but the Master stopped them as he approached the cell bars.
“What’s in that bag?” he demanded. “You can surely at least tell me that.”
The ghouls hesitated, because it was likely that they weren’t supposed to tell him that, but the smaller one relented. She pulled a scroll out of her bag and handed it to the Master through the bars. He unrolled it.
The scroll contained a crude portrait of the gamekeeper beneath big red letters proclaiming, 10,000 GOLD REWARD. Smaller print at the bottom read, Dead or Alive, only the word “Alive” was in much smaller print. Below that, even smaller yet, were the words See Overseer for details. Must provide proof.
“She’s put a bounty on her,” said the Master.
“We’ve been putting them up all over the dungeon,” said the smaller ghoul.
“Marl’s orders,” added the big one. He seemed quick to point out that he had no say in the matter.
“Right. Of course,” said the Master, handing the scroll back.
The two ghouls hurried out of the hold as quickly as possible, and when the Master was sure they were gone, he pulled out his scrobble, tapped the crystal three times, and waited for Thisby to pick up.
The trip to Giant’s Crossing was mercifully uneventful. Thisby moved slowly and kept an eye out for secret passages, while Vas and Bero trudged along behind her, chatting about nothing and everything at the same time. Through her unintentional eavesdropping, Thisby learned that Vas’s father had been sick and, according to Vas, was beginning to think about retiring from the “mining game.” They talked about Donato as well, but in much lighter tones than Thisby had heard from Bero last night.
She wondered if Bero was trying to remain upbeat for Vas’s sake, and Thisby found herself extremely upset by the notion. Bero had just lost what might have been his closest friend in the entire world, but instead of consoling him, the poor little noble boy just “wanted to keep things light.” Why put any worry lines on his precious little forehead? He was still treating this whole thing like some sort of game. It was disgusting.
“What do you think, Thisby?” asked Vas.
She grimaced. “What do I think about what?”
He laughed. “About my plan? Weren’t you listening?”
Vas bounded over to Thisby and got uncomfortably close to her.
“Well, you’re the one I should be selling the idea to! You’re going to be the next Master of the Black Mountain!” He beamed.
Thisby said nothing, but Vas continued undeterred.
“Picture this! A cart that runs on
rails! A whole mess of them, actually! No horses needed! My father has been working on a prototype for some time now. What I’m proposing is that we bore a hole straight through the mountain and open up trade between Nth and Umberfall! What do you think? It’s a win-win! Nth makes money, the Black Mountain makes money, you make money, I make money, naturally, since I’d own the rails—”
“I think it’s disgusting,” she cut him off.
He looked genuinely wounded.
“What? Why? We don’t have to be friends with Umberfall to trade with them. I know, it’s complicated. But Father always said—”
“I don’t care what your father said, and I don’t care about Umberfall! What I care about are the creatures that live in this mountain. Why don’t you get that? Why does nobody get that?” shouted Thisby.
“But—”
“Why can’t everyone just leave us alone!”
Thisby stomped off ahead, leaving a bewildered-looking Vas and Bero behind.
She was rounding a corner when a buzzing from her pocket made her jump. Her heart was still racing when she realized that the noise was coming from her scrobble. Glancing back over her shoulder, Thisby made sure that Vas and Bero weren’t close enough to hear her and opened it carefully.
Sure enough, the Master was on the screen, though looking much the worse for wear.
“Gamekeeper!” he shouted. “It’s you!”
Thisby wasn’t sure who else it could have been, but she could tell he wasn’t looking like his normal self, so she forgave the weirdness of the introduction.
“What’s going on?” she whispered. “Where are you?”
She wasn’t sure why she didn’t want Bero or Vas to see that she had a direct line to the Master, but she knew that she didn’t. At least not yet.
“I’m in the dungeon.”
“You’re in the dungeon?” asked Thisby. “Where?”
“In the dungeon!” he repeated impatiently.
“The dungeon’s very big. You’re going to have to be more specific,” she said.
The Master sighed.
“I mean the hold,” he said.
“Oh, well, you should really just say that next time. It’s very confusing.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“Never mind! I need to warn you, Marl’s gone off the deep end. She’s thrown me in the dun—the hold, and she’s put out a bounty for—”
“Wait! Shhh!” whispered Thisby.
Vas and Bero’s footsteps were coming closer.
“I’ve got to go!” said Thisby. “I’ll be in touch soon!”
She snapped the scrobble closed and crammed it back into her pocket just as Vas and Bero rounded the corner. They looked just as uncomfortable to see her as she did to see them.
“Thisby, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” said Vas.
“Never mind,” said Thisby. Thanks to the Master’s call, she’d momentarily forgotten what she was angry about, but now it all came flooding back. “Come on. We’re almost there.”
It was easy for Thisby to tell when they were close to Giant’s Crossing. She’d felt the rumbling through the soles of her boots for some time already, and when they’d gotten close enough to smell the wet, fishy air, the roar of the waterfalls made conversation hopeless.
As they emerged into Giant’s Crossing, Thisby heard Vas squeak and turned in time to see him nearly lose his balance. He took a step back and pressed himself against the wall, his legs as wobbly as a day-old fawn. Thisby would’ve laughed if she hadn’t felt the sharp snap of vertigo herself.
She took a few steps out onto the large, arching stone bridge. The perpetual motion of the waterfalls, combined with the constant rumbling vibration of the chamber, made her feel as if she was sitting inside a bass drum rolling down a hill. It was enough to cause even a fleet-footed person such as herself to lose her balance if she wasn’t careful, and in that way, Giant’s Crossing itself was already a sort of trap. Unfortunately, being that this was the Wretched Scrattle, it wasn’t the only trap. Thisby spotted the other one standing on one of the many bridges that crisscrossed below theirs, in the form of a twelve-foot-tall minotaur carrying a war hammer in one hand as if it were a child’s toy.
Thisby stopped and tapped Bero on the shoulder, and pointed down at the minotaur. He nodded and then showed Vas, who nearly had a heart attack. Thisby held a finger up to her lips to indicate they should be quiet, and then she proceeded to lead the way, stepping carefully across the stone bridge.
Everything in Giant’s Crossing was wet and covered with a fine layer of slime, including the annoyingly railing-free bridges. Years of spray from the waterfalls—not to mention an unsettling amount of pterodactyl droppings—had done their best to make everything as slippery as possible. Thisby had good boots and was accustomed to being careful, but she quickly realized she was the exception. Glancing over her shoulder, she watched Vas and Bero flail their arms in an attempt to keep their balance.
She looked again down over the side of the bridge they were on. The minotaur was still there but had stopped moving. He cocked his head and appeared to be listening. Thisby turned back to the others and waved for them to stop moving, but Vas had his eyes fixed firmly on the path in front of him, preoccupied with keeping his footing; a task that was immeasurably difficult in his fancy leather dress boots.
“I know who you are,” laughed the minotaur.
In Thisby’s Dungeon Survival Guide—which she’d hastily written for Jono when she realized that he’d be filling in for her as gamekeeper—she’d included a list of items that anybody who wanted to survive in the dungeon more than a couple of hours must bring with them. At the very top of that list, above swords and daggers, above a waterskin and rations, above even the ubiquitously helpful “ten-foot pole,” was, in all caps, “A GOOD PAIR OF BOOTS.” It was astounding to her that so many adventurers arrived in fancy, slick-soled dress boots or riding boots or something else entirely impractical for traversing a dungeon.
Thisby looked over at their destination across the bridge and back again at Vas just in time to see him slip and fall face-first onto the bridge with a loud, wet smack. When she looked down toward the minotaur, he was gone.
Thisby pushed past Bero and dragged Vas to his feet.
“Run!” she commanded, pulling at him.
He shrugged helplessly and pointed to his ear. It was very loud in here.
Thisby took a deep breath.
“RUN!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, inches from his ear.
Vas recoiled but only for a second, and then Thisby saw something terrible that made her heart freeze. The minotaur had reappeared, leaping from bridge to bridge as casually as a child jumping on rocks to cross a shallow stream. On his second jump, he almost missed and was barely able to pull himself up. When he did, Thisby noticed that he was laughing. This was all a game to him.
Thisby tugged at Vas’s collar, but he refused to run.
“I’LL FALL!” he screamed in her ear. “I WON’T MAKE IT!”
The minotaur was closer now. Only a few jumps away.
“COME ON!” yelled Thisby.
“I CAN’T!”
“YES, YOU CAN!”
The minotaur was just about to jump again when they caught their first break. A pair of adventurers appeared at the end of the bridge just below the one on which the minotaur stood. For a moment, the minotaur remained in a state of limbo, stuck between his two quarries, but in the end, he chose the new arrivals.
Unleashing a bellow loud enough to be heard over the roar of the waterfalls, the minotaur jumped down and charged them. The first one held his ground, drawing a short sword out of a scabbard. The other, however, realized the foolishness of this endeavor and decided to jump for it. She launched herself at the closest bridge but didn’t make it. It struck Thisby as odd that the woman didn’t scream on her way down until it dawned on her that she probably did, only to have her last scream swallowed up by the thunder of the falls. As foolish as he
r leap of faith had been, however, she was correct in the assumption that the man would suffer a worse fate. The minotaur swung his war hammer like a flyswatter and sent the man sailing into the abyss.
Thisby pulled at Vas again, but when he refused to budge, she let go and ran. Bero watched her run, unsure if he should stay or go as the minotaur turned his attention back to them and began his ascension. Thisby was at the end of the bridge before she looked back and realized Bero had stayed behind as well, bound by duty. He’d pulled out a spell book and was looking frantically for something that might save them from the doom that was coming for them all.
With a tremendous bellow, the minotaur burst forth as if he’d risen up out of the abyss itself. He landed on the bridge, soaked in mist and thrilled by the hunt. The impact of his landing shook the thin walkway to the point where Thisby winced as she waited for it to collapse. The bridge remained. Unfortunately, so did the minotaur.
Her view was blocked by the minotaur’s massive form, so she saw only the flashes of Bero’s spells as they burst around him like fireworks. The monster slowed and shielded his eyes from the lights, but didn’t stop walking forward.
“Cheater!” the minotaur bellowed.
Still shielding his eyes from the flashes, the minotaur drew back his war hammer and swung wildly, missing both Vas and Bero. He howled, stepped closer, and drew back for another swing.
“WAIT!” shouted Thisby, running back toward the minotaur. “PLEASE, WAIT!”
The beast turned in her direction, as if noticing her for the first time. He snarled.
When Thisby had first been brought into the dungeon as a baby, she was carried in by a minotaur. True, he was planning to eat her, but he didn’t, and that was what was important. Last year, when she’d summoned all the creatures of the dungeon to battle against the Deep Dwellers, minotaurs had fought alongside her and the rest of the monsters. These were not mindless creatures. They could be reasoned with.