Dungeon Lord- Ancient Traditions

by Hugo Huesca

  A flicker of movement on the ceiling caught his attention. He gripped the handle of his sword, as he saw a shadow scuttle mechanically through the rail-like ridges of the ceiling. Many shadows, at that. “Rogues?” he asked, trying to keep his voice level. “Ceiling.”

  “I don’t think they know we’re here, Lord,” Maser told him, voice level, business-like. “Or care. They’ve been coming and going for a while, not paying us any mind. I’m happy to return the favor.”

  Ed squinted, unsure if he ought to believe the Spymaster. Back on Earth, he had seen enough horror movies to have a natural distrust for tiny critters “not looking our way” because that often ended with the creatures suddenly deciding they did care after all, and were kinda hungry, often after the main characters were hopelessly lost.

  “Beetles of some kind,” Jarlen said. She pointed at a thing caught halfway on a tear in the latticed floor, twig-like legs kicking frantically by its sides. As they watched, the beetle-bot pushed itself out of the tear. It was bulky, rough and straight-angled, its carapace dented and scorched in some places. It had no eyes, but its mouth held a tongue-like metallic appendage whose function Ed couldn’t guess at first glance.

  The creature placed its tongue on the tear as if about to lick it, and a blue flame sprouted from a section of the appendage. Very slowly, it fixed the damage on the metal floor.

  “A maintenance robot,” Ed said to himself. Then he shook his head. Ivalis had no robots. He wasn’t even sure there was any silicon for a basic circuit-board. He was looking at some kind of… artificial drone. A magitech drone-golem. Judging from the activity by the ceiling, and the size of the Factory… he had no idea how many there were, but the number was big.

  He filed this information in a metaphorical cabinet in his mind in case it came in handy later on.

  The corridor dead-ended after a few yards. There was a hatch on the ceiling and another on the floor, both of them leading to maintenance ducts too small for anyone but Jarlen in her mist form to fit. There was an iron door for human-sized folks, but its hatch was heavy with rust and refused to turn after the Rogues had cleared it of traps.

  “Step back,” Mohnuran said, in the resigned tone of someone used to being drafted for heavy-duty jobs. He grunted and specks of rust broke out of the hatch as it turned a fraction. Another push, this time with his back into it, and the door opened, its grinding noise like nails on a chalkboard on a silent classroom. Ed could even swear he heard an echo.

  “Alright, even the dead know we’re here,” he said. “Everyone, be on your guard.”

  Two maintenance hatches later and the mechanical beat of machinery grew stronger, until conversation had to be done screaming over it. The air became hotter, and Ed could feel the back of his vest soaked with sweat. They arrived onto an intricate web of catwalks that oversaw a vast vault that could’ve easily fit a stadium. Huge magitech claws of yellow bone and iron grafts delved to the bottom of the black abyss and came up with chunks of black metallic dust, which they threw onto cauldrons with mechanical precision. Ed glanced down and heard something like huge blenders grinding rock—a constant stream of uninterrupted explosions.

  Ordered rows of beetles lined the walls, around the claws, fixing tiny failures in the machinery. It was as if the Factory was a living organism, and the beetles its red cells. Ed wondered what would the antibodies look like, if the Factory thought of the Dungeon Lords as an invading virus.

  “By the gods,” Mohnuran said, looking around. “Are those furnaces? We have delved into the depths of hell itself!”

  “We did that many hours ago,” Jarlen told him. Behind them, Rolim was quiet, still as a statue. “This is where hell builds its army.”

  Ed followed the path of the raw material as it was transformed. His eyes rose up, and further still. The dust became molten metal that the claws poured into containers that then disappeared upward into a shifting branch-sky of claw and transporting belts. The Dungeon Lord grabbed tight the railing of the catwalk, prey to a sudden bout of vertigo.

  “Let’s head up,” Ed told the others. There was little chance that Tillman’s office was nearby. “Anyone see stairs?”

  Lady Xorander set a hand on his shoulder. “Do you hear that?” she asked, glancing up. Ed shook his head—he could only hear the metal cacophony. “Someone just cast a spell.” Her Evil Eye shone bright eldritch green. “Area-of-effect. Advanced. Possibly used by a Dungeon Lord or a minion.”

  Ed didn’t ask her how she could tell—there was a reason most dedicated spellcasters spent a lifetime studying the basics of magic. “Weapons at the ready, everyone, someone just started the party without us.”

  Kes grimaced as Pholk’s scrying ball showed how Ed and the others eventually found a set of solid-looking stairs and slowly made their way up the processing plant of the Factory. They had been very lucky so far—a skirmish between the Dungeon Lords of Flesh and Bone had already drawn blood in a separate vault, with a Nightshade minion of Bone falling down into the grinders below. His mist-form had already returned to one of the coffins set in line in Dolmanak’s part of the encampment.

  The fight had ended after that, much to the fiendish audience disappointment. Most Dungeon Lords hated risking their skin. The participants of the Endeavor were already an exception to the rule, although, Kes knew, some more than others.

  “Take a look, Kes,” Alder told her, pointing at the illusionary screens floating around the camp. These showed fragments of the Endeavor for the common public to enjoy. Since most unaligned casters lacked the resources of a Regent’s Cleric or a Dungeon Lord, these images lacked the clarity of Pholk’s scrying ball, and often faded to black due to the natural overflow of magical energy of the Factory, or because of an area shielded from scrying.

  In the screens, after running from the fight, Molmeda, Redwood, and Sanguine arrived into a section where weapons were produced. Kes had never seen one of Saint Claire & Tillman’s Dungeon Lord’s First Weapon Set, but she knew her way around steel, and from gaze alone, the swords and spears forged by the machines pouring steel into molds lacked even a tenth of the quality of Heorghe’s—decades without supervision had corrupted the process, it seemed. And if the Weapon Sets were enchanted like the Basic Hell Chicken Farm kit… She shuddered.

  As she watched, one of Redwood’s minions tripped something. Possibly a trap, because an alarm blared, and everyone scrambled for cover, whoever could cast gesturing protective wards. Green gas poured from vents in the ceiling, and thick metal sheets fell to cover the exits. Most of them fell instantly, although some dragged, and one at the far end got stuck midway.

  Molmeda and Redwood, along with their minions, were closer to this malfunctioning exit. The Dungeon Lords went first, as Sanguine and his minions rushed for a different exit as the chamber slowly filled with the gas. Molmeda and his minions made it out, as well as two of Sanguine’s, but the weight of the sheet suddenly freed itself of whatever obstruction was impeding its fall, and it fell atop the third minion, square on his lower back, squishing his belly like a bug’s.

  Some spellcasters in the Haunt’s roster made gagging noises. The audience cheered, blood-thirsty, fiendish fists up in the air, clamoring for more violence.

  Lavy looked sick. “I hate this place,” she told Klek, the two of them next to Kes. “Lord Ed always wondered why the inhabitants of the Netherworld acted like… villain parodies, he called them. I think I know why. This is entertainment for them. They have fun, watching people suffer.”

  Klek gave Researcher Arieselle a poignant look. “Not all of them.”

  On the screens, Sanguine and his minions sealed the chamber with a type of Improved-ranked wall spell. They were separated from their main group and their most powerful Dungeon Lord, but Kes wouldn’t count it as a victory just yet—they walked down a long corridor that looked awfully like the one Ed and the others just had arrived to.

  Worse yet, Ed’s group was twelve people, and only a few of those were Rogues. They mad
e noise. If Sanguine went the right way, Kes was sure he would hear them coming before they did. And Sanguine had ambushed Ed before, in Undercity.

  “Pholk,” she said, thinking fast, “can we get a dungeon message to Ed?”

  “It’s against the rules,” Pholk said nervously. “And the Standard Factory is protected against most incoming spells, if they lack the right signal.”

  “Screw the rules, everyone’s cheating their asses off, including Ed, so we may as well,” Kes told him. “You saw how that gas trap failed to trigger—Tillman’s automatic maintenance is not enough to keep the Factory going. There is bound to be a hole in their protections. Find it. Your Dungeon Lord needs you.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Pholk said, and floated off to the part of the tent where a small field lab was set up.

  Tulip tugged at Kes’ tunic. “What if Sanguine’s minions do the same to us?” she asked. “Lord Wraith is in some of those screens as well, you know.”

  Kes bit her lip, the pressure of command threatening to drown her better thinking. Focus, Marshal, Ria’s voice snapped at her, somewhere far away. By some twist of fate, people’s lives are in your hands again. Do not fail them this time.

  Kes turned to Alder and gestured at Arieselle to come closer. “You two. An Illusionist and a succubus. You could easily pass for House Vandran’s minions.” Alder’s distracted expression turned worried when he saw the glint in her eye. “Infiltrate Vandran’s tent, either sabotage them or get Everbleed to fuck them up. Make some noise, Alder, that’s your specialty.”

  “Ah… shit, I’m on it,” Alder said, not sounding confident at all. “Are you going to give me an inspiring speech first?”

  Kes looked down at the scrying ball, where Ed and the others already were deep through the corridor. “No speech. Do it fast. Take the vampires with you in case you need to book it out of there.”

  Alder and Arieselle grimaced. “Well, I suppose this is the kind of dangerous heroics I’m known for,” Alder said nervously. “Let’s go, fair succubus, our people need us.”

  “And, Alder?” Kes asked over her shoulder. “Don’t get caught. I don’t want to imagine what Sanguine’s minions would do to you.”

  “Thanks, Kes, thanks a lot for that image,” Alder said dryly as he left.

  “What in the Dark’s name is this?” Spymaster Maser wondered, as the Dungeon Lords huddled behind him.

  It was an obsidian block, neatly sculpted, with a brass plaque underneath, the sort of thing Ed would’ve expected to find on a park bench or a historical building just renovated. “What does it say?” He couldn’t decipher the glyphs—it was written in the awful language of the Netherworld.

  “Welcome to the Museum,” Xorander read. “Kindly sponsored by Director Saint Claire to commemorate the one century’s anniversary of Saint Claire & Tillman’s operations, bringing joy to the Dark and doom to its enemies.” She turned to Ed and Steros. “We are at the start of some kind of guided tour, I’d say, dear Lords.”

  “Of course we are.” At this point, few things could surprise him anymore. He rubbed his chin. “A Museum, then? Perhaps we can find some sort of map here. And I doubt a visitor’s wing is trapped, so we should be safe.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Lord Steros warned. “Lord Zethras famously died when he tripped a mine on a bathroom in the third floor. Wasn’t he your uncle, Lady Xorander?”

  “Such a shameful defeat. My family likes to pretend he got erased by Objectivity,” Xorander said.

  The Museum was a welcome change after the iron jungle of the lower levels. They passed through a tall brass arc into an elegant antechamber with a black-and-white lacquered floor and elegant, powered-off magical torches that sprang to life with a yellow glare as soon as the group stepped forth. The other end of the antechamber was covered by a red curtain, and the walls at the sides sported two huge, elaborate paintings. The colors had dimmed with time, and parts of the paint had peeled off long ago, revealing the concrete behind.

  “Careful,” Jarlen told Ed as he examined the paintings up close.

  As the Rogues secured the antechamber and the following room past the curtain, Ed studied the paintings. One was a tall, sturdy man standing proud atop an open field under a twilight sky. He wore a black suit, white gloves, and a top hat. The trees didn’t look anything like those in Hoia, so Ed guessed the man was in Lotia. The forest by the antechamber’s entrance was lush and green, but further into the room it became a dry field, devoid of trees, forges and machinery replacing the greenery. The sky became a cold night, the artist skillfully taking into account the dual sources of light from Camcanna and Ullira on the gleam of the metal forges.

  “Saint Claire, I presume,” Ed said.

  “He was much shorter in real life,” Jarlen said. “But I suppose every artist needs to choose between realism and their own survival when the man they’re portraying is a Dungeon Lord.” She pointed at the forges. “Lord Saint Claire never fought a battle in his life. He was a master of trade and industry, extending his influence that way instead. In his heyday, he was one of the richest men in Lotia.”

  “Not your type, then,” Ed told her.

  “On the contrary, my Lord. Those city-states that challenged his rule often found themselves buried by debt, their coin worthless, their competitors suddenly able to undercut all their prices. Famine often followed.” She smiled fondly. “Good times.”

  Ed walked to the other wall. Evangeline Tillman had been a beautiful, middle-aged Witch with eerie, long, flowing hair and a haunted expression. She could’ve been Lavy’s aunt, although there was something of Jarlen’s sharpness to her features. The artist had clearly agonized to give her gaze a dreamy look, set in the distance. Instead of a dress, she wore a man’s vest with big golden buttons, black trousers, and held an obsidian walking stick with a silver skull on top, charms dangling all around. The background showed a terrible storm in the Netherworld, like a hurricane devastating the land in its wake. Ed studied the storm and realized it was made out of specters, and it wasn’t devastating the land in so much as drilling through it. In the next scene, the storm was over, leaving a huge crater behind, the yellow ribs of the undead dragon partially uncovered at the bottom.

  “Tillman was the soul of the project,” Jarlen explained. “A mad dreamer who spent her youth traveling to dangerous, far-off places and risking her life to master long-forgotten magics. Some called her a fool, in love with the distant past. As you know, however, sometimes the past still has gifts for those brave enough to uncover its secrets. In her case, she found power. And madness.” She stood next to Ed, an inch from Tillman’s likeness. “I never liked her.”

  “Why?” Ed asked.

  “Ah, that was a long time ago.” Jarlen’s smile revealed an inch of her long, white fangs. She waved a hand at the red curtain. “After you, my Lord. The Endeavor awaits.”

  Warlock Agumin, second-in-command of the minions of Lord Vandran, was having a rough day. He had served his Lord for many years, so he knew Vandran wasn’t fond of failure—then again, few Dungeon Lords were.

  From the corner of his eye, he could see Lord Vandran as he and his minions walked through the maze-like corridors of the Museum, trying their best to regroup with Lord Molmeda without tripping any more security measures.

  And a few yards away, he could see a screen where Lord Wraith, Vandran’s enemy, entered that very same Museum. It was a chance that Lord Vandran wouldn’t wish to go to waste. In fact, the Dungeon Lord would be very disappointed if Agumin failed to warn him. And House Vandran knew the art of inflicting pain as much as it knew the dances of pleasure. Agumin wasn’t keen on being on the receiving end of Vandran’s attentions.

  The plan was to set up an anti-scrying field around the tent so the other Regents wouldn’t know he was about to contact Lord Vandran.

  However, he had a pressing matter to attend to first.

  “You must believe me,” said Ougan, a low-ranked miragefiend minion, who stood in front of Agumin
with his two sets of hands pointing in accusation to the creature next to him. Both of them were barely restrained by a pair of very confused guards.

  “No,” said Ougan, standing next to Ougan and pointing angrily at the first Ougan, “you must believe me, Master Agumin. This is an impostor. Kill him at once!”

  The first Ougan recoiled in anger, then blared his fangs. “Liar! You are using illusion magic to impersonate me, but it shall not work! Warlock Agumin knows me too well!”

  In fact, Agumin only knew the minion’s name because of both Ougans insistence to scream “I’m the real Ougan!” every few seconds. He threw the scrying ball another glance—Vandran was still in the Museum. The Warlock tugged his long beard and frowned, wondering if it wouldn’t be faster if he just blasted both minions at the same time.

  Both creatures had the same character sheet, but the Warlock had expected that, after living in dungeons filled with miragefiends for so long. Any decent illusionist could create a fake character sheet and set it in front of his own—which couldn’t be tampered with—to fool an observer, as long as he was aware he was looking. If the illusionist was very good, he could fool an entire room this way, as long as he knew where everyone was.

  “Liar, you say? I am the real Ougan!” said one of the Ougan’s, Agumin wasn’t really sure which. “Master, destroy this impostor at once!”

  “Enough of this,” Agumin said, his anger rising and clouding his better judgment. He could hear the other minions in the tent snickering at this farce, some of them possibly even hoping he would make a fool of himself, so they could replace him after Vandran got rid of him. “If it’s illusion magic the impostor is using, the solution is simple. I shall harm both of you hard enough the illusion drops.”

  “Good!” said one Ougan.

  “Fine by me,” said the other one. “I’ve nothing to fear. However, Master, make sure your spell is powerful enough, in case this fake’s combat casting skill is high enough to keep concentration through pain.”