by A. J. Markam
Selecting an icon brought up a submenu of all the members of that race. There were options to bind, resurrect, and place them throughout the different floors.
Not only that, but there was a separate submenu entirely for building. There was both an AutoCAD 3-D free-draw system, and a submenu filled with pre-visualized structures. Doorways, arches, walls, fountains, tunnels, windows, mezzanines, balconies, alcoves, trapdoors, pits, rock outcroppings, boulders, stalactites, stalagmites, rivers, waterfalls, springs… if I’d seen it during my time in the dungeon, it was on the list.
There was also a submenu for video feeds. Three windows were already up: one of the Duchess, one of Quint, and one of Urik. There were preset options for seeing Vos from the air, along with controls to zoom in or out.
A little digging in the menu revealed a gigantic database of video clips I could call up at will. I realized that these video clips were the ‘memories’ that Deek had projected onto the pool of water.
I just stared in giddy wonder at the complexity of it all.
If God were a gamer, this was the interface He would create.
Suddenly Deek’s voice interrupted my blissed-out reverie. Except I heard him like a voice in my head, the same way Alaria had been speaking to me in her crystal form.
- YO, MEATBAG – YOU GONNA DO SOMETHIN’, OR YOU JUST GONNA SIT AROUND ALL DAY TUGGIN’ AT YO’ DANGLY BITS?
“Yeah, yeah,” I said hurriedly, and set about my business.
First I had to find out where Quint and the palace guard were so that I knew how much time I had.
I could see Quint on the video screen, but I had no idea where he actually was, other than he wasn’t in the dungeon yet.
I zoomed out from my current view. The four underground quadrants shrank in size, and suddenly the city of Vos appeared above them like the coolest miniature trainset landscape ever.
There was the castle, the marketplace, the city walls, and more. Hundreds of little black dots were swarming through the streets towards the miniature coliseum, which was no bigger than a doughnut.
Hundreds more red dots were converging on the coliseum, too, from another direction. I zoomed in and saw that it was the palace guard. I selected one of the leaders, and a submenu allowed me to pull up a video feed focused solely on him.
The palace guard had entered the coliseum and were shoving adventurers out of their way left and right as they made their way to the stone hut entrance.
“Shit,” I muttered. I didn’t have much time.
I zoomed back into the dungeon and began playing with the controls. I tried to move creatures from one floor to another, and realized I had to activate the stone slide shortcut so they could move from floor to floor quickly. I couldn’t just magically transport them – or if I could, I had no idea how.
I accessed the Build menu and created a few tunnels and trap-door pits, then experimented with reversing my actions. There was an ‘Undo’ function – but I also made sure I knew how to physically fill in the tunnels with more stone and seal up the pits.
That might come in handy… leading Quint and his men down a newly created tunnel, then sealing them inside…
Once I selected an option, the event would unfold automatically – which was awesome. It meant I could hit the icons for 1, 2, 3, 4 menu actions, then move on to 5, 6, 7, and 8 while the first four were being executed.
A commotion in one of the video windows drew my attention.
Outside the stone hut, Quint and his Guild members had come face to face with the palace guard. I could see each group in different videos, like multiple angles of the same security footage.
“This dungeon is under the authority of the Dungeon Guild!” Quint roared onscreen.
“This dungeon remains the property of the Duchess of Vos – now stand aside!” the captain of the guard shouted back.
For a second I hoped that they would slaughter each other a la Shyvock and Orlo, and save me a whole lot of trouble.
No such luck.
Quint gave a crafty grin. “This dungeon is big enough that it will take our combined efforts, Captain. I understand there are four separate quadrants to this beast. I propose your men enter one, and mine will enter another – and may the gods choose the victor.”
The captain hesitated. His only other option was to fight the Guild and potentially lose all his men before even stepping foot in the dungeon – but I could tell he was wondering if it was some sort of trick.
Quint must have anticipated that, because he stepped aside and gestured to the hut. “Your men can enter first, if you like. Or we can go in your stead.”
“We shall go first,” the captain snarled. “But know that if you try to double-cross us – ”
“I swear by the gods that you shall have safe passage into the dungeon, and neither I nor my men shall touch you while you are inside. Other than that, though, Captain, you’re at the mercy of the beast.”
“Very well – I swear the same.” The captain turned back to his men. “FORWARD!”
Quint and the Guild watched in silence as the palace guard tromped past them into the hut.
Shit.
“Here they come!” I called out.
- GOOD GODS A’MIGHTY, Deek muttered.
“How’s it going with Alaria?” I called out.
- IT’S GOIN’, IT’S GOIN’! YOU DO YOUR THING, MEATBAG, AN’ LEMME DO MINE! AND DON’T GET US ALL FUCKIN’ KILLED, Y’HEAR?
With those wonderful words of encouragement, I turned my attention to battle.
The palace guard had chosen the slime mold quadrant. I watched on both the video screen and on the diagram of the dungeon as they entered the first floor.
The video view was pretty standard, but the miniature was way cooler. I zoomed in so that I could see the entire first floor, and watched little grape-sized slime molds congregate and attack the inch-tall toy soldiers of the palace guard.
I heard the clang of steel from the video monitors, and watched the little red figures wipe out the green blobs with ease.
Shit.
I supposed I could resurrect the slime molds, but the truth was, they were trash mobs. Entry-level obstacles, nothing more. The palace guard was going to go through the first 20 floors with relative ease. They would probably kill everything in their path without suffering any casualties –
Suddenly it hit me.
Why the fuck did I have to make it easy on them for the first 20 floors?
I started opening submenus and clicking icons wildly.
- WHAT DA FUCK YOU DOIN’, MEATBAG? Deek’s voice boomed inside my head.
“Moving all the bosses up to Level 2,” I said gleefully.
- WHY YOU DOIN’ TH– OHHHHH, Deek said as he got it. YOU JUST GONNA IGNORE CONVENTION AND FUCK ‘EM HARD AS YOU CAN AS SOON AS YOU CAN, HUH?
“There’s no rules that say I can’t put ALL the bosses on floor number 2, is there?” I asked.
- NOPE. NORMALLY WE DO IT ALL GRADUAL-LIKE, CUZ A SURE SIGN OF A ROGUE DUNGEON IS THEY PUT CRAZY-HARD SHIT WILLY NILLY EVERYWHERE. THE REST OF US DON’T WANT THE GUILD ON OUR ASS, SO WE RAMP UP THE DIFFICULTY BIT BY BIT. BUT THE GUILD’S ALREADY ON MY ASS, SO FUCK ‘EM. SPEAKIN’ OF ROGUE DUNGEONS, WHAT’S GOIN’ ON WITH THE MIDGET AND THE CRYSTAL?
Oh shit. I’d totally forgotten about that.
“Hold on, let me set up the dungeon for the Guild and then I’ll find out.”
- FIND OUT?! WHAT THE HELL YOU MEAN, ‘FIND OUT’? WHY THE HELL DON’T YOU ALREADY KNOW?
“Cut me some slack, I’m just getting the hang of this,” I snarled.
Quint and the Guild had chosen the skeleton dungeon, and were cutting through the first wave of skeleton warriors like a blowtorch through butter.
I moved every single skeleton boss to Floor 2 – and, just for good measure, I started moving all the elemental bosses to Floor 3.
Fuck ‘em hard as soon as possible, just like Deek said.
However, I held off on moving all the mythical creatures
like the centaurs and harpies. I figured the Guild would be better than the palace guard at clearing a dungeon, since that was what the Guild did day in, day out. But I didn’t know for sure. Once I had seen how both armies handled themselves, I would throw the mythical creatures at the stronger of the two.
- BE CAREFUL, MEATBAG, Deek cautioned me. ANOTHER REASON I LIKE TO SPACE EVERYBODY OUT IS SO YOU DON’T GO LEAVIN’ UNPROTECTED GAPS WHERE SOMEBODY CAN SLIP THROUGH TEN FLOORS WITHOUT DOIN’ SHIT.
“You do your thing with Alaria and let me do mine,” I said, throwing his words right back in his face.
Well, if he had a face.
- OH, IT’S LIKE THAT, HUH? OKAY. OKAY. YOU DO YOU, MEATBAG – JUST DON’T FUCK MY SHIT UP.
Then he muttered to himself under his breath, SONUVABITCH HANDLIN’ MY FUCKIN’ DUNGEON, SAYIN’ ‘LET ME DO MY THING’ LIKE HE OWN THE DAMN PLACE… THAT’S SOME MOTHERFUCKIN’ PRESUMPTUOUS BULLSHIT RIGHT THERE…
I ignored Deek. I had too much on my plate to worry about his precious little feelings right now.
I zoomed out and searched for Urik, thinking I would find him with the rogue dungeon core. To my surprise, the dwarf was alone in the stables. His men, meanwhile, were rushing towards the coliseum, a stream of tiny blue dots racing through the miniature city’s streets.
Great – ANOTHER army to worry about.
But where the hell was the crystal?
I was about to zoom in when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye.
On the edge of the model of Vos, five blue dots were gathered outside the city walls. I zoomed in on them until they were the size of plastic toy soldiers.
One of the tiny figures was holding a rice-grain-sized shard that glowed like a blacklight.
Bingo.
I opened a video feed and was greeted with the sight of four church paladins standing in a circle, watching as a priest laid the black crystal in a hastily dug hole.
The priest stepped back.
All the paladins raised their swords and tensed up as…
…absolutely nothing happened.
After 20 more seconds of staring at the crystal, one of the knights asked, “Are we supposed to do something? Say a prayer, or…?”
“We’re not going to pray to THAT thing, you heretical fool!” another one snapped.
“I’m not saying we pray to IT, you heathen dog! I’m suggesting we petition the gods for their – ”
Suddenly the darkness inside the crystal began to swirl and spark, like miniature thunderclouds trapped behind glass.
“Look!” one of the other paladins cried out. “I think something’s hap– ”
He hadn’t even finished his sentence when the dirt beneath the crystal collapsed and the dungeon core disappeared into the ground.
In the blink of an eye, it was gone.
The paladins stared at the hole in shock.
“Was it supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know. I assume so.”
They stood around for another few seconds, waiting.
Nothing happened.
“Wonderful, so it just disappeared?” one knight complained. “How are we supposed to keep an eye on it if – AAAAAH!”
A sinkhole rapidly formed in the middle of the group, and the ground collapsed in an ever-widening circle with the black hole at its center.
The four paladins scrambled backwards quickly enough to avoid falling in.
Unfortunately for the priest, he did not. Instead, he slid down the slope of crumbling dirt.
I saw this nature documentary as a kid about an insect called an antlion. The larval form builds traps in the sand – steep-edged pits that they can cave in at will. Ants wander by and accidentally tumble down the steep slope, and the antlion is waiting for it at the bottom.
That’s exactly what happened with the priest, except there was no creepy insect larva waiting for him at the bottom – only a dark hole.
He screamed all the way down, scrabbling with his hands to hang on to something, but the earth gave way that much faster beneath his fingers. His screams only stopped when he disappeared down the hole.
The paladins stared at the sinkhole in disbelief.
“Well… THAT was clearly unfortunate,” one of them said in a dazed voice.
“We must rescue him!” the youngest knight cried out.
“HOW, you fool? Go down there and you’ll suffer the same fate as HIM!”
“Quiet – do you hear that?”
Ever watched the 1953 version of War of the Worlds? Remember that sound when the alien spacecraft first pokes out its probe and looks around? It’s this evil ch-ch-ch-Ch-CH-CH-ch… ch-ch-ch-Ch-CH-CH-ch noise, like a bunch of cicadas from Hell.
Well, a very similar sound was coming out of the black hole at the center of the pit.
I recognized the sound effect right away, and yet it was still creepy. I mean, I could intellectually write it off as There go the game designers again, ripping off an old sci-fi sound effect, but it still made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
But these NPCs had never heard anything like it before, and it showed.
“By Karoth’s crown, what is THAT?”
No one got the chance to answer, because two massive black tentacles erupted from the hole.
They were slimy and covered with suckers, just like a giant squid’s – and they wrapped around the two nearest paladins and pulled them down into the pit.
The two men screamed until they were swallowed up by the hole.
“Zaroth’s blood!” one of the remaining paladins screamed, and turned to run –
But a blast of black lightning arced out of the hole and struck him in the back.
By the time he hit the ground, he was little more than a smoking corpse in a scorched suit of armor.
The final paladin was even unluckier. The ground gave way beneath his feet, and he slid feet first into the pit – just like an ant in an antlion’s trap.
He managed to grab onto some grass at the rim of the sinkhole, though. He was barely hanging on when there came a crack-pop-POPPING sound from below.
The paladin looked over his shoulder in terror and saw something even worse than the tentacles: the priest was clawing his way out of the hole at the center of the pit.
But something was wrong with him.
His face was misshapen, like it had been crushed on one side. His jaw hung way too loose. His eyes looked glassily in different directions, and there were bumps big as marbles moving beneath his skin.
When he opened his mouth, it got even more nightmarish.
“hUmAAANNN,” the priest gargled in an inhuman voice.
The priest dug his fingers into the dirt and began to climb up the side of the sinkhole.
“NO! GO AWAY!” the paladin screamed. He kicked his legs and tried to get a footing on the shifting slope, but failed.
He began half chanting, half blubbering, “Holy Mother Eramia, sister of morning, daughter of grace, protect me from evil – ”
“hUmAAANNN!” the priest rasped, and suddenly rose up into the air.
Well… part of him did, anyway.
I recoiled in horror as I realized it was only the upper half of the priest’s body. The rest of him had been ripped off at the waist, and now the tentacle was manipulating what remained of his corpse like a puppet.
I can’t begin to convey the full wrongness of the scene. When you see the upper half of a dead guy with a giant squid’s arm shoved up his body cavity, his arms and head still moving around, and weird bumps pulsing under his skin, it’s enough to give you fucking nightmares.
Especially when the tentacle began to ooze out of the priest’s open mouth like an anaconda.
It had pierced him all the way through, from his gut cavity up through his head.
The priest-puppet rose up into the air, weaving back and forth on the rippling black tentacle – and then the corpse flopped forward, grabbed the paladin’s legs, and pulled him down the side of the sinkhole.
His screams were cut short as the walls of the sinkhole collapsed on top of him, choking off his cries and burying him alive.
I shut off the video and stood there trembling. I knew it was just an NPC, but still…
“Jesus,” I whispered.
- WHAT’S WRONG? Deek’s voice boomed inside my head.
I flinched, startled by his voice. “I just saw the Rogue Dungeon in action.”
- SOME FUCKED UP SHIT, AIN’T IT?
“Yes. Yes it is.”
- WHO’S JESUS?
“What?”
- YOU SAID ‘JESUS.’ WHO’S JESUS?
“Uh… well, back where I come from, some people believe he’s God.”
- WHICH ONE?
“Which what?”
- WHICH GOD?
I thought about answering, then decided to pass. “…never mind.”
- YEAH, WELL, IF HE SMART, JESUS DON’T FUCK WIT’ ROGUE DUNGEONS.
I was beginning to see what Deek meant.
And why Quint’s monologue about being trapped in a rogue dungeon hadn’t just been a rip-off of a famous speech.
It might just be a horrifying preview of things to come.
34
Speaking of Quint, I checked back in to see how everybody’s favorite Grand Inquisitor was faring.
Turned out, waaaaay better than I’d anticipated.
He and his black-robed warriors, hunters, and mages were obviously adept at clearing dungeons. They’d formed into small platoons that took on individual bosses, then moved on to the next monster after they’d killed the first.
I hadn’t noticed the black-clad shamans and priests earlier, but there were plenty of them – one for each platoon. They healed their comrades’ damage as fast as the bosses could dish it out.
As far as I could see, the Guild had taken next to no casualties, and yet they’d completely destroyed every skeleton boss in the dungeon.